The Troubadour

I think every chap should have a special place, a club or something where he goes to centre himself. I've been having quite a few days and I was feeling, well a bit low. So I the one thing I knew would cheer me up, I went to the Troubadour.

I don't know if you are aware of the Trubadour but it is a lovely cafe/deli near Earls Court. It's got a very strange mixture of decorations and has all sorts of interesting people play in the little venue downstairs - Jimmi Hendrix did a few gigs there.

There is a little no-smoking section with a load of odd-ball tables and chairs downstars. It plays jazz music and has a selection of interesting books for you to read while you are there. I had a duck inside a chicken inside a goose with a mixture of veg while reading a very silly book on how to escape from prison camps.

I returned to the office a changed man, there's nothing quite like a jolly spiffing slap up lunch to get you back into the swing of things.

Emails of the dead

What happens to people's emails when they are no-longer with us? Should you arrange to have a friend email everyone you know to let them know you are no-longer there?

I think it would be nice to leave various profiles on websites and things up there, as a sort of online memorial. Myspace might become a virtual graveyard, left to remind us how great some people were.

Bike

I visited my Father, it was an experience. Wales is cold and full of mud, but it is very good fun to zoom about on with motorbikes. This is a picture of the bike which is now mine, my dad built it from the ground up, really built it, not just put together some pre-made parts. It's a trials bike, designed for the Pre 65 catagory. It's an absolutely monster of a bike but quite tricky to ride until you understand what it is for.

I spent quite a lot of my time in Wales zooming up and down hills on it, occasionally having 'encouraged dismounts', I had a limp for a few days but it is better now.

While I was in Wales my friend Phil died in a house fire, I've got the funeral on Friday. He was a great chap and I'm rather miffed. I knew him through my friend Hannah who went travelling with him and they were besterest mates in the whole world, she is in pieces.

I'm off

My journey back to the West Country is about to begin. This means I'm going to be with out an internet connection for about six whole days. As shocking is that sounds I think I can just about survive it provided I'm careful.

I'll do a long report when I get back but I think I'm going to use this time with out work, or the internet to do some jolly serious thinking, and have lots of meals. That's what we do in the West Country, eat and think.

Okay mostly eat.

Warning, this will be a sad post

I'm going off to see my father today, I'll be hopping on a trian straight after work and then spending just shy of a week with him and my little brother.

This is a bit of a significant holiday as it is extremely likely it will be the last chance I'll get to spend with my father before the cancer gets him.

I imagine we will probably go fly fishing and he will tell me bites of wisdom while we are in the middle of a stream, in the deep South of America. What will really happen is I'm going to spend a lot of time screaming about on motorbikes and being bitten by goats, which I think is better in some ways.

Either way its going to be quite a week, I should make sure I pack enough gin.

The Feminist

I'm going to be seeing the girl I met for cocktails on the eve of Valentine's Day again, I'm rather taken with her so I've decided she gets a name. She shall be known as The Feminist. The picture is of course Emmeline Pankhurst who was also a Feminist, but I have never been for cocktails with her.

We are going to go on a ghost walk when I get back from my holiday. I hope it will be spooktacular.

French Martini, the return

I'm back on the dating scene now. This means that I'm back to my old tricks of drinking French Martinis and also storing a fresh set of clothes in my desk at work so if I find myself at an inpromptue sleepover I have something to suitable to wear at work.

I had a date on Sunday with a new girl, she looked almost exactly like a young Nigella which was as you can imagine very good with me. I introduced her to French Martini's and talked about nonsense. She told me about how awful she was at driving and and used her eyes to great effect. I will definitely be seeing her again.

The magic of eyeliner

I'm normally a brunette sort of chap. I might even go so far as to say I'm quite well known for being a brunette only sort of chap who can be jolly good friends with blonds but doesn't really like them in that way.

Anyway, I realised that some blonds can be rather nice, but only if they wear too much eyeliner, and listen to French jazz.

Blasted devices

My telephone has bally well broken. It started to malfunction when I was on my way to meet a very lovely girl for cocktails. It froze after a text message arrived from my friend, and it's never been the same since. It won't stay on for long and it keeps flashing strange lights at me.

I really don't know what to do with it. Normally not having a phone would be a delightful release, but in the middle of carefully co-ordinated flirting it's a bit of a no-no. Honestly, you would expect your gadgets to all pull together during important times like this.

The Year of the Pig

It's the year of the pig.

O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!

Time to bimble down to Chinatown and join in the fun, I might even pick up a new pair of gloves. That seems like a suitable thing to do to mark the occasion of the new year. New year, new gloves, and maybe a hat.

Back from the woods

I am returned from charging around the woods. One person had to leave early because he cut his head on a rock and had to go to A&E (He is okay but he is going to have a corker of a scar). We did more running around and I ache in places I didn't know you could ache in. There is something so wonderful about a proper forest, it fills a chap with vim and vigour. I'm currently glowing with good health like a Victorian strong man.

If you go down to the woods today

I'm going to go to the woods today, proper woods. Woods outside zone 2 where men can be men and run around with twigs. I'm going to spend all day charging around trees and bushes eating fresh fruit and stuff.

It's going to be marvellous, sort like the male version of going to a health spar. Any mud on the face will be just because I fell over in a muddly place.

Right I have to find my tweeds now. Where did I bally well put the blighted things?

Oh but she did...

Well she did contact, me just a few moments ago. She said she had a manic day so hadn't had time to email me. Which she probably did, but I must say I don't know if that is the sort of behavour that gets girls invited out to special cocktail places. We shall have to see how things unfold.

Watson, the game is afoot.

Why?

Do ladies, when they reach a certain age feel a sudden burning need to wear leopard print tops? What is it about this specific pattern that is so intoxicating to them?

I'm trying to think of a thing that men are drawn to as much, but I can't.

Oh and the girl from last night hasn't replied to my message, so I guess the search must begin again.

Late-date

I had my first date through the website last night. It was extremely brisk we went from first contact to arranging cocktails in about 8 hours.

The plan was originally to go to this great little cuban place I know where they do the amazing mango and ginger daiquiris you will ever taste. It's a suitably louche gem of a bar and would have been perfect for a first meeting.

Sadly Soho wasn't an option so we ended up going out in my old haunt of Chelsea. It was a bit of a jaunt from Hampstead but had the advantage of being my old prowling ground so I knew all the good places for a cocktail or two late at night when a chap is trying to give the impression of being thrillingly charming.

We arrived at once such place, she turned up first by a matter of minutes and I swanned in after giving up to the fates and getting a cab. It was raining impressively so everyone enterting the place could make a dramatic entrance like something out of the Malteze Falcon.

She was far more pretty than her picture (which was attractive) and all together lovely. My very good friend N who is going to be vetting the girls from this site, or at least that is the plan, is bound to approve of her. She was intelligent, witty, creative, interesting and had studied feminisim at university. I don't think I'll ever meet a girl who N would approve of more than this one.

It was a good first date, we exchanged strange travel stories and talked about nonsense. I made a remark about making people paper mache dinosaurs that seemed to go down extremely well, in fact there was a lot of laughter.

After a good few rounds of cocktails, ending in an espresso martini for me which was excellent, we left and I got a cab home.

I'd like to see her again (any man would) but I'm not so sure of her intentions. It's one of those things really, unless a date ends with a girl doing something rude on me I find it very hard to judge how it went. At the least it was an entertaining evening and for my first full day on this website hopefully a jolly good indicator of things to come.

Lovely things

There is this dating website you can join where your profile is written by a friend where you only get to reply to what they have made. I can't say about the quality of the site for meeting people (although a friend of mine seems to do jolly well out of it) but the best thing about it is writing nice things about friends.

It's lovely just to write something really nice about someone you like with the intention of just making more people realise how spiffing they are. Maybe the website works off the instant karma generated from this? By doing a good act you increase your chances of nice things happening to you.

I'm going to make sure I give up my seat on the underground today, just to make sure that my karma is in tippity top condition.

Slow day

I'm not drunk, or hungover and I can catagorically state that when you aren't drunk or hungover Fridays are just as trying as if you are in a blissful state of intoxication.

Tonight is going to be a multi-party night, in the early evening I meeting up with a chap who is a bit of a rake. He is jolly charming provided you aren't a woman he fances, in that case he is extra charming and then usually is a bit of a bounder.

After meeting up for pints with him (to meet girls of course) I'm meeting up with a female friend who was fairly recently seduced by him. They are not on the best of terms to say the least but I am stead-fastly staying neutral on it.

Although I must admit I'm not going to introduce him to any more of my female friends, the fall out is rather tiresome.

I do hope I don't get a hangover tomorrow, but I have a feeling tonight might be surprisingly boozy.

Other people's jobs

I was working my little socks off yesterday (Actually they were quite big winter socks) Every now and then things happen, things beyond my control that mean I have to do two weeks worth of work in a week.

While I was having one of those weeks the people sat opposite me were.

1) Measuring a lightbulb to buy a new one. They didn't want to go to the local hardware shop because it was cold so they spent 3 hours measuring a bulb. Then they gave up.

2) Doing extensive research into dog racing.

I should point out that neither of these are activities that would be productive to work, they just decided that they felt they would do that.

Snow (reprise)

It's massively snowy here, it's AMAZING. Radio 4 is missing key presenters because they are snowed in and it's still going, the snow of a few weeks ago seems fey and weak compared to the mighty storm going on outside my window.

I'm probably going to get hunted down by a pack of wolves on the way to work.

Brilliant.

'I'll bite your tits off'

I went to the pub last night, again I only popped in to say hello but I didn't leave till closing time. Not because a Scotch was about (He is coming in March, honestly I am such a berk when it comes to dates) but because I got talking with someone at work I really get on with.

We were talking nonsense and then I said something along the lines of there are some things I don't tell work people because I don't like to put weight on other people's shoulders. She got mortally offended, and so to stop her drunken rant I told her what I was referring to.

I said I had already written my letter of resignation. She was horrified and started crying which was even worse. After a while she managed to calm down enough to talk again and proceeded to tell me off about how she had fought my corner and that if I left she would 'bite my tits off'.

I'm still not sure what a chap should say in reply to that.

She then questioned me in a confused manner about how it seemed that I had been getting on so well with the Berk who has been put in charge of me. The Berk by all accounts said he thought it was going brilliantly.

I said it was like a World War 2 prison-camp escape film. I'm being polite to the guards just long enough to walk around the parade ground and shake the dirt out of my trousers from Charlie tunnel. By Jingo you can't let them get suspicious when you are planning a get away.

Oops

I've just realised what the date is. It's the 5th! This is significant because my old flatmate and massive friend from Scotland is coming over to say for a couple of days on his way back from New Zealand. He has been over there for a few months, hobbit hunting or some such nonsense and he is on his way back to get a job and get back on the grindstone.

Last time I saw him we went to slightly risque party painted as angels. Photos of this event are on the Internet. We are the most burly angels you'll ever see.

Anyway, it should be a bit more sedate, but the timing isn't brilliant. Monday and Tuesdays are the worst days for me at work so I can't get them off, even if I had remembered about him visiting.

Any tips on how to amuse a visiting Scotch would be very welcome. Otherwise we will just fall back to 'get spaztastically drunk'

I'm broken

I went out drinking last night with the chaps. I got abosolutely destroyed. Today has been an almost complete write off.

It always seems to be such a good idea at the time to get another pint in a funny glass, and now I'm not well because of the evil booze.

I need to mend my face. Why is there never a sexy nurse about when you want one?

The story of shoes

I was walking to the shops to do so shopping and I saw these shoes.

Why were they there? Did someone walking home decide that they were just too uncomfortable and put them aside neatly? Or perhaps they had been put out for the bin men, discarded because of matters of style?

Or maybe someone was wearing them and met the love of their love, so decided to leave London behind, they left their shoes and all worldly possessions and set off to open a bar in Brazil and spend the rest of their days making mojitos in the sun.

Who knows eh?

Feeling fruity

Well spring is in the air, and after months of living in a world of darkness (leaving for and returning from work in darkness is so very wrong) the sun is back. It's not really warm enough for light-weight linen suits but it's definitely heading that way.

I want to go on a date, I don't really want the responsibilty of a girlfriend, or even a one-night-stand I just want a pleasant evening where the air is awash with intent and the conversation is just the right side of prickly.

Oh and while I'm at it, I'd like a unicorn and a spaceship.

Valentines Day

*runs into room*

I made this. It made people snigger, so I'm going to share it.

*runs out of room*