Anti-Happening

Feb4

There’s a new thing on my deodorant. Underneath where it says, ‘anti-perspirant,’ it says, ‘anti-transpirant.’ In my understanding, when something transpires, it happens, so ‘anti-transpirant’ means the deodorant stops something from happening. Which I suppose is kind of true. You know, sweating.

I suppose I could have just googled it…

Always be wary of anecdotal evidence

Jan25

There is a friend of mine, for example, who said he had irrefutable proof that wearing hats warms up your brain cells too much and reduces your intelligence. He got straight A’s in his GCSEs at school, then trained to be a teacher – but a few years later, when he started wearing hats, he found that he couldn’t remember what a quadratic equation was.

Actually that didn’t happen, I was just making a point.

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Too Much Poo

Mar17

There are too many turds. A surfeit of shit. An excess of excreta. I don’t know how it happened or when. Correction: I basically know how it happened, but not how it came about that there was suddenly more of the stuff. And as to the when… recently. Over the last few weeks/months. This has occurred, according to my observational capacity, in the environs of the places of my home and work: those being, respectively, Hagley and Kidderminster (both being towns in the West Midlands, UK, for those who know not of such things). “Why?” is the question of puzzlement. I mean, why now? What has occurred? And do I have any theories regarding such? As to the latter, I posit suggestions thus:

1. It is a protest on the part of dog owners, secretly organised on a dark (dark brown…!) part of the Interweb.

2. It is a protest on the part of dogs, secretly organised on a dark (you know…) part of the Poocherweb.

3. Uh… that’s all I got… 😕

Thus and so.

What I Heard While Out & About

Mar15

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“Somebody is putting piles in the wrong place!”

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“I said, ‘Do you want me to dictate a spine of a report, and then you can input the information?’… ‘No!’…”

…

So there you go.

My Newfound Okay-ness With Football

Jan18

I had bad experiences of PE at school. Although I may see things differently if I actually went back in time, I would say my PE teacher was a bit of a bully. I wasn’t naturally sporty and I wasn’t, let’s say, positively encouraged to enjoy sports. There were some exceptions, but my emerging feelings about football certainly derive in part from the above. I also, in my early childhood, was quite aware of football hooliganism – and I remember feeling quite intimidated by football fans running through the streets of Moss Side when there was a big match on… so football, for me, seemed to be a game for thugs.

Over the next couple of decades or so, I had no incentive to “get into” football. This has recently changed…

I work in a school.

The class I support is comprised of five teenage boys.

Two of those boys are “into” football.

We are also often joined by another teenage boy who is “really into” football.

Since September I have been largely supporting the PE teacher (who is more calm, patient, intelligent and funny than I remember my school PE teacher being) and his assistant – both of whom are “into” football.

I have also been recently supporting (and enjoying doing so) the lunchtime football club.

And I like and respect and enjoy being around the aforementioned footbally folk.

So can you see why I now have incentive? As such, this past week, I have looked at a football league table, asked the footbally folk for my predictions of forthcoming fixtures (see how I used the word ‘fixtures’?) to be added to the ongoing spreadsheet, acquainted myself with the ‘Rules of Football’ and gained a basic understanding of the Offside Rule. Re the latter, it is essentially about stopping a player from hogging the opponent’s goal, so that your team mates can spend all their time taking long shots, upon which the ball can be just chipped into the net (see how I said, “chipped into the net”?) – which would of course make for a boring game. Please forgive me, football fans, if my understanding of this is ‘offside’ (sorry).