The tig/tag line

We were moving up north. Leaving Worcester behind to head to our new home of Chesterfield. My sister and I, (aged 7 and 9 at the time, respectively) were having a discussion in the car on the way there about what things might be different at our new town and school. We were laughing that they might pronounce things strangely, or call things absurd names. The most absurd of these was something along the lines of:

“What if they don’t call it ‘tag’? What if they say ‘tig’, or ‘tog’?”

We both laughed at the sheer thought of it. Tig? How ludicrous! Of all the zany childish things we’d thought up, this one was just downright hilarious.

Cue the first day at our new school:

“Do you want to play tig?”

I obliged and didn’t tease, I was the new kid after all.

And thus it began, I have wondered to this day if the tig/tag line would be a more appropriate north south divide than the Watford Gap.

From time to time I remember the strangest things about my youth and start to wonder just why on earth they have stuck with me for so long. It might have been more useful if those memories had been replaced with science or maths formulas, but they weren’t. I thought from now on I’d start sharing them with you. So without further ado, here’s random memory #1:

The winning tray

The school dinners at my junior school were like most others, I imagine: You waited in line, picked up a plastic compartmentalised tray and got a generous serving of main course and a pudding which usually involved pink custard.

The school were running a competition whereby the winner got to choose the pudding for the following Friday, and to receive this honour you had to pick up the one tray with a lucky star sticker on it. Now we’d been queuing for a while as we’d fallen behind in the usual barbarically mad rush, but we finally reached the tray pick up point.

I picked up my tray to find that there was no lucky star sticker, but that it was in fact rather dirty. I put my tray to the bottom and picked up a clean one, again with no star, and moved along to get my lunch. Not so fast. The head dinner lady came storming over:

“I saw that.”
“What?”, I replied with my youthful innocence.
“You were picking up different trays looking for the star”, she accused.
“No, I really wasn’t, my tray was dirty.”
“Get to the back of the queue”, she ordered.

So to the back I went. Shocked and, as it appears, forever haunted.

The lucky star was eventually found, and with the entire choice of the pudding menu at his disposal the winning pupil opted for iced finger buns. What an insult.

There’s loads of shopping malls. And fast food. And six lane motorways. Sometimes I did have to remind myself I was in the UAE and not the USA.

I said my farewells to Mrs Quagliero after checking in at BHX and went to get a Wetherspoon’s breakfast to start off my 8 day visit with my Dad in Al Ain, UAE. After spending £5.99 on a full English I have now learnt that you never buy anything until you’ve got to the departure lounge, where the same meal was a full £2 cheaper. My So-Co-di-Co was a rather lofty £3.77 though, which showed me a good example of supply-and-demand costing as nervous flyers were in abundance. I was not one of them.

I love flying, but since a BA flight in 2002 I’ve only been on budget airlines with leg room that wouldn’t have been adequate had I been an amputee. Suffice to say I was looking forward to the comparable luxury of the Emirates economy class. It was. Plenty of leg room, complimentary drinks and an in-flight entertainment system better than most people’s living rooms. (Not mine.)

I arrived at Dubai Terminal 3 around half midnight local time. We’d dilly-dallied and done two holding circles off the coast because we were late leaving Birmingham and therefore fell behind in the queue. The airport itself was grand and well-kept, and after an aeon at passport control and baggage claim I was finally with Quagliero Senior on the Al Ain road to – you guessed it – Al Ain.

Lots of activities were packed into the next few days, including day trips to Abu Dhabi and Dubai. Abu Dhabi has a nicer feel to it, but you can’t help being awed by the sheer vastness of everything in Dubai. The Burj Khalifa is huge, and that is the biggest understatement I have ever made. It doesn’t look like it’s from this earth, you feel like you’re in a Sci-Fi film. I went to the observation deck on the 124th floor and looked down at the ant-like civilization below, but I still found it’s dominance of the skyline more impressive. Making sure I took in all the sights we drove onto the palm and up to the Hotel Atlantis. As we left I snapped a shot in the wing mirror:

Farewell Atlantis

Back in Abu Dhabi we had a walk around the Heritage Village and I had my first taste of new Arabian culture: go to the mall and get fast food. It was a glorious day but we somehow managed to get caught up in a wind storm amidst the sunshine. Father continued the tour of Abu Dhabi by driving to the Yas Marina F1 circuit on the little cluster of islands they’re developing. The roads were practically empty but, inspired by our surroundings, we did convincingly beat a taxi driver off the line.

We also visited the Al Ain Zoo where the man feeding the penguins seemed to have a never-ending bucket of fish, and Hafeet Mountain where the summit lies above a big car park covered with skid marks (no, not that kind). They do love their cars.

In total I visited 5 shopping malls: Marina Mall, The Dubai Mall, Mall of The Emirates, Al Ain Mall and Al Jimi Mall. I don’t even think I’ve been to 5 shopping malls in England, but it was good fun seeing a pee wee hockey team go through their drills in the middle of  Al Ain Mall. Gordon Bombay was nowhere to be seen, he was possibly in Dubai with the Mighty Camels.

Rather than continue this in prose, I’m going to do some bullet points to recapture your attention. I bet you’ve been drawn to them ever since you noticed them – and now you’re here, how exciting!

• If you’re ever in the UAE and need fuel, make sure you’re in range of an ADNOC, they fill your car up for you and clean your front and rear windscreens whilst you wait!
• There’s such thing as camel racing. And they have robot jockeys. Seriously.
• Jan/Feb weather out there is like a good British summer, without the constant risk of rain.
• I didn’t see a single Arab/native working (apart from passport control).
• Arabic reads from right-to-left but numbers still go from left-to-right.

I’d hoped for a more insightful conclusion from my trip, but they really, really like Malls. In fact, I think they should change their national anthem to Robin Sparkle’s “Let’s go to the Mall”. It would certainly be in keeping with their adoption of Western culture.

It’s a new year! The time to make resolutions and finish off all the chocolates and cakes from Christmas.

It seems those two things are always in direct conflict with each other:

I’m going to get in shape this year, but I need to finish off this mountain of crap food before I can.

Oh the struggles we face…

I, for one, will be getting in shape this year. (I’m hoping that by publishing that statement on the internet it will serve as motivation). The things I will NOT be doing to get in shape include fad dieting, starvation and vomiting. Anorexia and bulimia have their own psychological issues, but crappy diets just piss me off. In fact, I can envision 2011′s new craze now:

On weekdays enjoy nothing but protein topped with the hair of burnt cats, then on weekends – for a real treat – crush five peas onto an octopus bladder and drink day old urine from a Swiss mountain goat.

I DON’T UNDERSTAND. To exorcise the fat demon you have to get off your arse!

Quick fixes don’t work. As soon as the imbalance that started them is restored, everything goes back to normal – like a storm.

My logic with weight loss is eat (healthy-ish) food in normal portions and exercise. That’s the magic word though, isn’t it?

“So you’re saying, what, that I have to actually… like… do stuff… you know… outside?”

Oh no. The burnt cat’s out of the bag now. Yes, it appears that running, jumping, swimming and climbing was the answer all along. The stuff we’ve done since cavemen. Don’t waste your money on slim fast, weight watchers or gym memberships – go outside and be a hunter gatherer.

Failing that, get an exercism.

Pots pans and dishes are a pain to wash,
Night after night we soak rinse and repeat;
Until our life was made easy by bosch
The little machine who cleans them a treat,
For months we thought he just did not function
And the mounds of washing gave us the blues,
We are lazy and this was no exception
It turns out he just wanted a new fuse,
We still needed rinse aid some tabs and salt
And best not forget a pre wash rinse through,
The first cycle results gave us a jolt
They were clean without work; a dream come true,
Now we have our bosch we need not worry
Dirty dishes get clean in a hurry.

It was one of the greatest feelings in the world. “We have some exciting news about your ticket” the email read.

Standing in a church aisle, 45minutes before my brother-in-law’s wedding, I decided to check my email on a whim as we waited for the guests to arrive. Earlier in the week I had purchased a few tickets online for the previous evening’s euromillions draw (the appeal of £82m being too hard to pass up). I didn’t know my numbers, I always use Lucky Dip. I couldn’t even begin to imagine the gut wrenching feeling of playing the same numbers every week, and then missing it that one time…

So as I began to read the email further, I started to get that adrenaline-racing-heart-pounding-face-warming-nervous feeling as it said “Please click here and enter your username and password to view the details online now”. As I am not a regular lottery player, I had thought the whole appeal of the euromillions was that it was an all-or-nothing affair. No side pots, just one big jackpot prize. My wife wasn’t convinced, said it was either a joke email or I’d won a tenner. My response? “No. Let me have this moment.”

It was special. It’d finally happened. This was it. I was about to be super rich for no reason whatsoever. I definitely deserved this.

Day dreaming about winning the lottery is a staple part of my day. I’m pretty sure I can’t be alone in this.

Not a morning goes by where I don’t enjoy my coffee with the thoughts of what exactly I’d do first if I were to become England’s latest unworthy millionaire. Buy a fast car? A huge mansion? Both?

Not so much… In fact, for someone as self indulgent as me I am quite surprised by the generosity I conjure up during these caffeine fuelled millionaire mornings. I must be quite selfless after all. It seems all I need is a few million to let it shine through.

Shame my £82m turned into £17.20.

I suck at gambling.

There’s having bad luck, and then there’s me. I’ve heard stories that superstitious pit bosses hire ‘icers’, people whose sole purpose is to go bet on a guy’s hot streak and watch it fall apart. If this is the case, I’ve got the foundations of a solid career in place.

To clarify, I am not a regular betting man. I have been to a casino three times in my life and dabbled with the odd accumulator and some online roulette and Texas hold ‘em at University. I blame a good friend of mine, and University house mate, for my initial foray into gambling, we’ll call him Jacob. His crime? He is lucky. Down right annoying lucky. The person who tells you over breakfast that they won £x last night (and then proves it). It was one afternoon in my second year at University when I decided I’d deposit £20 and see what happens. I’d stick to roulette and low odds (black, white, evens, odds etc) and see if I could have some luck of my own.

I did. I actually started winning. My £20 crept to £50, and that in turn went to around £70. I put large money on black and watched as it spun in – at one point my winnings were at £150. I couldn’t believe my luck, no wonder he makes so much money. It was at this point I text him saying  “Playing roulette – Up to £150″. So you can imagine his surprise when he got back from his lecture to find me head in hands and drowning my sorrows in diet Coke.  A few reckless attempts to cover my losses ensued, and I quickly realised why the house always wins.

In hindsight I had only lost about £50, not the two hundred it felt like, but the damage had been done. Since that first day, I’ve been cursed. My initial greed has stained me in the eyes of Fortuna.

She laughed at me again this past weekend when my brother-in-law’s stag party arrived at Grosvenor Casino in Birmingham. After a nice meal it was time to hit the tables. We’d all been given a £5 free bet for the roulette tables, and deciding we wanted this in actual chips as opposed to the roulette-only free one, a plan was devised where three of us would go to a table, put our own chip on a different third (effectively covering the whole table*) where it pays 2/1. We’d then have 2 regular chips, and the freebie. A couple of trio’s did this successfully, until it was my group’s turn. Whilst trying to look incognito, I took too long to put my chip down – the final third wasn’t covered. I’d managed to screw up the simplest of procedures. I thought we’d be okay, we did have two thirds of the table covered, my bet could then be used as some sort of bonus… but I’m sure you can guess where the ball landed. In my attempt to win it all back with my free bet, I lost. In my attempt to win that back with my free £5 slot machine slip, I lost. Three bets. All gone.

I was annoyed, but they were free bets, I still wasn’t down with my own money. I joined everyone at the roulette table, swapped my £20 for 50p chips and enjoyed some small success before the stack ran out. With my last £20 I headed to the blackjack table where a couple of the stags were. I sat myself down, swapped my money for chips, and asked my father-in-law to join us. He duly obliged, sat next to me, and the game began…

If I could go back and change anything, I’d make him sit on my left. I lasted around 12 hands. I returned half an hour later as he left the table £50 better off.

If you ever want to earn yourself some easy money – just ask me what I’d bet on (or sit on my right).

* Only effectively, as zero doesn’t fall under any third.

If there’s one thing that has survived the terrible summer weather of late, it’s the Englishman’s desire to barbecue. If the clouds part for even a couple of hours, the smell of flame-grilled meat surrounds my neighbourhood like the old smog of London town as worrying Mums slap factor 50 and sun hats on the kids.

Just like the smell of walking past a fish and chip shop, it’s usually too much to overcome and I find myself trudging out into the garden and taking the rain cover off our £20 bargain barbie. As is the budget nature of our grill, the supplied rain cover usually does little to protect it, instead mixing with coals of old to create a nice black and grey sludge.

As a man, I feel that getting a barbecue going is some sort of right of passage. Man. Fire. Very primal. Our ancestors would make huge fires without lighter fluid and matches, so surely I can get a few coals burning. This is very rarely the case.

Being stubborn and ignoring the wife’s suggestion of just buying a couple of disposable barbecues, I get the bag of coal from the garage. Layer of newspaper, some coals, layer of newspaper, more coals and a sprinkle of fire lighters to finish. It’s a man’s trifle.

Time to strike a few matches, drop them in strategic places and then sit back and watch the magic. If the trick is to burn out the fire lighters and newspaper without increasing the charcoal temperature, I’d say I have it down to perfection. This step is usually repeated two or three times as my frustration increases. It inevitably ends with me, a bottle of barbecue lighter fluid, and a demonic stare from behind the three foot flames.

This flash fire approach, whilst visually impressive to any onlookers (namely my wife), really doesn’t do much in the form of sustained heat. So whilst she thinks I’m some sort of flame mastering demi-god, I’m just a man-on-the-edge with an open fire and a flammable substance. This is usually about the time I’m told, “Wow! That looks good, [guest A] and [guest B] will be here soon, is it ready?”

“Of course it is – look at it – it’s Etna in our back garden. I’m just nipping to the shop to get some [thing I deliberately forgot]…”

This mad dash to Tesco has become all too frequent over summertime. The worrying realisation that there may not be any disposable barbecues left, and the feeling of relief when I see them. Their glorious wired mesh and flimsy metallic casing, their bright and bold branding: Instant BBQ. I usually pick up two.

Arriving back home, straight through the side gate into the garden. Tearing the wired mesh from the disposable and throwing it’s paraffin laced briquettes and lighting sheet onto my dying coals. They do in a few minutes what I laboured with for over an hour.

I will succeed one day. I must. I just hope it’s before Tesco run out of disposables.