Life: the story so far...

Today I got back from the Isle of Wight Festival. The last one I went to I was 17 with long hair, pierced eyebrow and a whole summer of avoiding work at all costs and generally maximising fun.
This time I went as a bloke in his late twenties having taken two precious holidays off to make it to and from the island working for a multinational corporation. I also had a girlfriend.
It's quite funny how revisiting events like this makes you think how things are going, and I have to say I'm quite happy with it all. Some friends of mine had their lives mapped out from the moment they left school - they had a clear ambition to become something, be that a doctor, a vet, a designer or whatever. They all managed it by the way (one of the advantages of Facebook - it's quite easy to keep tabs on how everyone is coming along) and are doing very well. When I was younger I used to get quite jealous and stressed that these friends knew what they wanted, and the careers advisors must have loved it -

Eager young medic to be:"Sir, I'd like to be a Doctor"
Relieved careers advisor:"That's great young man - you need to work hard at this and that and then go to doctor school and then after some more hard work you'll be a doctor."
Eager young medic to be:"Thanks"

My career path followd a slightly different path, in that I really wasn't sure what I was going to get up to and to be honest I still don't. Since leaving school, I have worked in theatres, got a degree in set design, ran a cafe bar, lived in Greece, France & Austria, taught sailing & Windsurfing and finally ended up in a town I had never set foot in before (Brighton - and I love it here) working for a big airline managing their hotel offerings.

The reason I talk about this is to highlight that I used to hate the fact that I didn't know what was going to happen to me in the future - there is a real security in knowing you have found your niche in life, and I still, when I'm having a bad day, would love to know if I actually have 'a calling'.

But then I think it's actually quite nice not knowing what's around the corner, and if, in a years time I'm doing something comepletely different, then I'll probably be all the richer for it. Here's to not knowing.

:-)

Why I love my bike

It's been a while, well over a month since my last post, and I would have racked my brains over a decent excuse, but I havn't found one....

So, in the last month I started a new job at British Airways Holidays after a long spell at Neilson and it's been a bit of a culture shock, with lots of new stuff to learn and lots of names to learn, but happily it's all going nicely.

It feels like we're into the summer now and we seem to be out of the evil blip of crap weather we've had over the last couple of weeks and I'm now out on my bike again on a fairly regular basis which is all good. It always amazes me the restorative powers of getting on a bike and going for a spin for a couple of hours - I come home some nights in less than a good mood (caused by the general rubbishness of trains/commuting) and my girlfriend simply points at my bike and tells me to go riding until I've cheered up.

And it works. I'm not a fan of exercise particuarly in that I don't crave lungbursting climbs and burning legs, but more of the fact that riding my bike is something I can do within 30 seconds of coming home (change into shorts, t-shirt, helmet, out of door) with the minimum of faff. I can go alone and listen to some tunes, I can meet friends and sit in pubs and not do too much time in the saddle at all. The versatility makes it one of the coolest things I have.....

I know I'm never going to compete on a bike because I like drinking beer too much, don't have the balls to go as fast as the bigs boys, and I don't llike pain, but the more I do it, all my faults go to make it an even better experience because the concentration it takes for a shakey rider like myself to stay upright cancels out all the bits going round in my head that pissed me off, and by the time I get home, I've forgotten about them completely (aided slightly by the aforementioned beer).

My bike: singlehandedly putting me in a good mood, saving the planet, and keeping me avec girlfriend. Jolly good.

Image courtesy of Clive "I got this picture published in a proper book" Andrews. To view more of Clives work, have a look at his Flickr page

FaceBook

My Cousin came over for a party we had the other day and told me about facebook.com.

For those of you un-initiated, this site is all very Web 2.0 - a social network site whereby people can get in contact with thier mates, dump photos on their site, leave notes about how they are feeling today and all that jazz. On the face of it it seems like a great thing, getting in contact with old friends (that's good) sharing photos (all good too), but i do get the feeling that the whole thing is being embraced by the wrong user group. Adults.

The entire language of the site lends itself to the school yard "john is now your friend", "you are waiting for samantha to confirm she is your friend" blah blah blah. My suspicion is that this, like going to the playboy mansion, would be a whole lot more fun if i was single and able to go shakring online without the shame of having to do online dating.

But I have a girlfriend, So now I blog while running a sideline in facebook, just so no one leaves me out of the fun.

Man Flu (MF)

OK, if you're interested in something witty and funny today you are not going to get it. Sorry. What you're going to get is what our lady folk call 'Man Flu' (known to the medical fraterinty as MF). Now I'm not a wuss, honestly, in the past 5 years I've had 2 days off work sick, but I truly feel rubbish today.

So I'm not going to talk about anything funny.

I'm going to talk about glow in the dark pigs and fish.

Channel 4 tonight showed a programme about GM animals, and it asked the question....Is it right?

GM anything surely by its nature is something thats going to go wrong at some point sooner or later. Pig poo for example. A guy has made a pig that has less phosphorus in its poo (which is a good thing apparently). and it's all dead environmentally friendly. great- but isn't the real solution to not eat as many pigs in the first place? (hence producing less poo). Constantly re-shaping our world because it doesn't quite fits us perfectly is surely a road to disaster - without going all hippy dippy on you, earth has been here quite a while, and we are unlikely to out live it unless we start playing by its rules.

Having said that if there was a GM cure for Man Flu (MF) I'd bite their fucking arm off.

The morning after the couple of days and nights before..

I wake up today with a sore throat, aching joints and a couple of uncomfortable-but-not-quite-enough-to-get-sympathy-from-your-girlfriend burns on my wrists and fingers from attempting to BBQ everything for the 30 odd people who were round our flat last night.

Which brings me to my point - why are celebrations always so focused on us all getting absolutley ruined? I'm not taking the moral high ground here by any means - a dry party to me is well, not a party, or at least one that generally includes the elderly - but it does make you think that as we are at the top of the food chain, you'd have thought we could figure out that its not that great for us.

Animals seem to have sorted this out and seem to be quite happy just chilling out when they can, and eating, pooing and shagging whenever they can/have to. (More on this subject to come, most probably to be entitled "cats - why they run the show really")

I have now pretty much written off sunday in terms of activity and have decided to start a blog - not through some noble calling to voice my concerns to the world - although thats what I'll tell people down the pub later...

Actually it's more down to a particuarly bad omnibus direction of Hollyoaks.

Anyways, as my first posting, I'll keep it fairly short, but suffice to say that my postings are likely to ramble across many subjects but will tend to focus on my fave bits of travel, the sea and sailing, mountain biking and food & beverages.