San Sharma Approximately

Rufus Does Rufus: Rufus Wainwright at the Royal Opera House

2011-07-24T10:44:00.002+01:00

Flashback

2011-06-21T23:27:00.001+01:00

They say, before you die, your life flashes before your eyes. I know this to be untrue. No, I’m not blogging from the beyond, but - years ago - I had a near-death experience.

Or, rather, a near-broken leg experience.

The doctor said that had the car been driving any faster, I may or may not have broken a bone or, at the very least, a finger nail.

At the moment of impact, a life did flash before my eyes. But it wasn’t mine. It was series 1 to 3 of Dawson’s Creek.

"I don't wanna wait for our lives to be over."

Last week, I found myself on the roadside again, but this time it wasn’t a near-death experience, but the start of something new. I was down on one knee, asking my girlfriend Brook to marry me.

In that moment, our life together flashed before my eyes. The night we met at a house party in Archway, our trip to India, moving in together, getting a cat, losing a cat, the night we fought and I threw my dinner in the compost (I had my reasons), that morning, when we had tea and toast in bed.

What happens now until the next flashback us up to us to fill with happy memories.

She said, yes, by the way! I’ll keep you updated on this blog.

My Love Affair with Computers

2010-03-29T20:29:00.003+01:00

You could say that I was never properly introduced to computers. At school we shared one between three and the other boys seemed to know them much better, negotiating them as they would girls at the school disco. As such, I hung back, dreading my turn. We'd bump teeth, I thought, step on each others toes.

It wasn't until my dad brought one home unannounced from God-knows-where (probably the same place he got my mountain bike or the VCR) that we got know one another. The Amstrad PC-1640 sat on the dining room table, eating actual floppy disks; sometimes it took two to get going and you had to pull a latch down over its mouth so it didn't spit them out.

My dad had no idea how to use it, but somehow it fell for my lines and showed me a rudimentary Paint programme and eventually a Bruce Lee video game, which I amazingly accepted as playable.

A year or so later, my uncle handed down his old Windows 3.1 laptop. And while I was initially impressed with its mobility, the feeling soon evaporated when he explained the battery and the power cable were both faulty. It still worked, mind you, but only when you kept your foot on its power cable.

So while I couldn't take it into school, I could swap its not-so-floppy disks with my friends. I traded a 'perfectly playable' Bruce Lee video game for some pixelated photos of Gillian Anderson, which loaded on my laptop's greyscale screen, one line at a time, coming into focus to reveal a frowning FBI agent in a trouser suit.

My network grew with the advent of a new PC - the Advent 'Astute', which ran Windows 95, CD-ROMs, like the Encarta Encyclopaedia, and the revelatory Internet. It was with this that my love of computers grew. I couldn't get enough. I ripped demo CDs from magazine covers, I clogged up the phone-line and ran up the bill. "You hang up," I said to the Internet. "No, it replied. "You hang up!". And I made what was probably the wisest investment of my life: a box of old .Net magazines from a car boot sale for just a pound. At the back of each issue was a section on how to code your own website. Now, 12 years on, I'm making a living doing just that.

We were never properly introduced, but computers, the Internet and that box of old magazines changed my life.

Movember Mo' Problems

2009-11-30T14:51:00.000Z

Today is the last day of Movember, an annual month-long moustache-growing charity event to raise funds and awareness for men's health issues.

Now, I may not be the best ambassador for men's health: having fallen through the cracks of the NHS, I've not been to the doctor in over two years and I don't know if this growth is normal, but - hey! - I signed up anyway, and have spent the month growing a moustache in the name of charidee.

But it nearly didn't happen. Movember rules state 'Mo Bros' must start the month clean shaven, which I did, using the only shaving paraphernalia I could find in the flat - a bottle of Herbal Essence and Brooky Wook's lady shave.

I'd kept a full-beard for over two years, had thrown out my own shaver and was a little bit worried about what I would find underneath the facial hair. Would there be spots, I wondered. Or a tan line?

There were neither, thank God, but as I chipped away at two years of beard and the little bits of biscuit I found in there I started to think back to the first time I shaved.

While I'm keeping one now for charity, it's not technically the first time I've had a moustache. Like so many Asian boys it came early - I was perhaps 10 - and like so many Asian mothers mine was reluctant for me to shave it off and enter puberty.

I did the summer before starting "big school", but it kept coming back, each time thicker and faster. It meant that I left one institution looking like Frida Kahlo and entered another looking like an Ofsted inspector with a 3.30pm shadow. Teachers clutched their lesson plans nervously as I walked the halls. I was an 11-year-old man-child, ravaged by puberty, bones flung in all directions; I was stretched to six feet, sinewy muscle just covering the expanse of my growth; my voice an imperceptible pitch, miming its way through three years of school choir - a music teacher unable to harmonise my low growl with the soprano of my classmates.

I must have imagined that the feeling of awkwardness would pass as I grew into my body and became a man but, in truth, I don't think it ever has. I'm just as awkward now with my moustache, as I was at 11 years old without one.

"Oh, this is not a look I'm nurturing, by the way," I said in an effort to explain away my moustache to a conference delegate last week, gesticulating awkwardly at my own face. "I'm doing it for charity."

"You're doing Movember too?" Another delegate asked, joining us, and pointing at his own moustache.

"Oh," the first said, laughing so hard her name badge popped off. "I thought you meant your glasses!"

***

One man dies every hour of prostate cancer in the UK - more than 35,000 will be diagnosed this year! It's the most common kind of cancer here.

Movember is now in its third year and, to date, has achieved some pretty amazing results, working alongside The Prostate Cancer Charity. You can find out more at: http://uk.movemberfoundation.com/research-and-programs.

And look back over my progress at: http://uk.movember.com/mospace/248626 and - please! - it's not too late to make a donation.

I may be losing my moustache tomorrow, but I'm keeping these glasses forever.

The Swami's Visit

2009-10-27T13:19:00.001Z

Quite often, what we mistake for our earliest memories are in fact our fathers' first camcorder outings. So I won't claim this as my own, but I do remember seeing, at least, a home video of a man known to my family as simply... the Swami.

The Swami, which is an honorific title, is a holy man who tours the world, staying for a few days at a time in Hindu homes. Since the South Asian Diaspora is amongst the furthest flung, the Swami is a very well travelled man.

In the home video he is shown praying in the flat above my parents' corner shop in Newport, Shropshire. Not his most glamourous gig, I imagine, but for us - my two sisters and I - he was an exotic visitor in our otherwise suburban lives.

In what is a particularly uncomfortable scene for me the Swami reaches down from his seat on the sofa to where we children are sat, at his feet, and strokes my head, like I were the cat to his Bond villain. Instead of purring, I stifle a laugh for what felt like an hour, but what the video reveals to have been only a few minutes.

For us, it was the highlight of the Swami's visit. We recounted the story to each other (though we were all there), each time its telling more exaggerated. "It was like I was his bowling ball!" I'd say, not realising how creepy that sounded.

***

When he returned, years later, we were in our teens and had moved house. As he climbed our driveway, I noticed a pair of Nike Air Jordans peeking out from underneath his orange robes. He looked up at the new house, much bigger than the last, a symbol of my parents' success, and declared it bad luck.

"Its shape," he said. "Is like the open mouth of a roaring lion."

I came out to help him with his bags, paused and looked up at the house as if it were a Magic Eye illusion. Maybe the lion would appear if I moved up close, fixed my eyes and stepped slowly back, I thought. But, however I looked at it, it was a new build, detached house with a separate garage joined by a granny annexe extension.

Once inside, he found our house more to his liking. Furniture draped in tarpaulin, at his request, so that when he sat he wouldn't come into contact with the seat. Water too, on his arrival, was poured into his mouth so that the glass didn't touch his lips. He plugged in his mobile phone to charge (it was the first I'd ever seen) and announced his final request - that he stay in my bedroom. As the youngest, he said, my room would be untouched by carnal desires. Good luck with that, buddy, I thought.

That evening, as we gathered in the lounge for a prayer session, we resumed our original positions: children (and mere mortals) to the floor, Swami perched on the covered sofa. This time, when he reached down to stroke my head, he found himself tangled in sticky spikes.

"Any questions?" he asked when we were done. "Anything you like."

It was quiet. I guess we thought if we asked any questions we'd only have to sit there, stifling laughter, for even longer. But it was awkward, so I raised my hand and scanned the room, looking for inspiration, my eyes landing on a painting of the avatar Krishna, in typical pose, playing a flute and dancing with women. Topless women, I'll add.

"Mr Swami?" I said.

"Swami," he corrected me.

"Swami, why's the Lord Krishna always surrounded by women?" I asked. I was fifteen, bear in mind, and if I could just have his secret...

"Sandeep," he said. "You mustn't ask questions of your religion. OK?"

OK. So his question, as to whether we had any questions, was a rhetorical question?

I was glad when he left. And as I helped him with his bags I thought that for a Swami, "free from all the senses", he sure had a lot of shit with him. Checking for his mobile phone, a dance I'd soon learn myself, he was on his way, off to chide more children and put them off the religion their parents so wanted them to embrace.

***

I was reminded of all of this when I went home for Diwali last weekend. It was a similar scene: the family gathered in the lounge for a prayer session on the Saturday evening, except we all sat on the floor this time. And perhaps because this made me feel like we were on the same level, I interrupted the prayer to ask why we didn't say it in English.

"I mean, no-one understands this," I said. I hadn't wanted to start a revolution, but the debate my question had sparked was turning into one.

"Can't you be a Hindu without speaking Hindi?" my sister asked.

"Yeah, why's the religion and the language so tied up?"

You can see that our line of questioning had matured since the Swami's visit, but even still it was upsetting mum. She finished the prayer, put away her books and went to the kitchen.

The next day, as I was packing to return to London, I came across a magazine in my old room. Though the Swami wasn't with us this Diwali he'd found his way onto the cover of Hinduism Today, which had pronounced him, "Hindu of the Year". I wondered how he'd earned the title. Fluent in Hindi? Unquestioning? Looking at the cover, he had a lot of bindis. Maybe that helped. I took a photo of the magazine and put away my camera. I'd been teaching myself photography and Diwali this year had turned into an ethnographic study.

In the car on the way to the railway station I apologised to my mum for upsetting her the night before.

"That's okay, son," she said. "It just upset me, I suppose, that you're willing to teach yourself photography, but you seem uninterested in your own religion."

It didn't feel like my religion, I wanted to say. And the fact that I asked questions meant that I was interested.

But I didn't say anything. I didn't want an argument before I left, and I didn't really want a revolution. I'd had a great weekend, and I knew that when I got home and processed the photos I'd have the evidence in my hands. You just can't say that about religion.

"Mum," I said, as I got out of the car. "Why is Krishna always surrounded by topless women?"

My mum wound-up the car window and started the engine. I guess you can't say that either.

Naked Wii Fit

2009-10-16T01:09:00.000+01:00

I was squeezing into an old pair of trousers when I first realised that I'd gained weight. In fact, it was the third pair I'd tried to squeeze into that day. I thought they too had 'shrunk in the wash,' along with my shirts, my jacket and my... watch.

Adjusting its strap, I thought to myself that it was time to lose some weight. The hips don't lie, as they say, and neither do the scales. As I stood on them, the needle swung wildly to the right and I watched as my toes slowly disappeared beneath the girth of my belly.

What was next to vanish? I shuddered (and wobbled a little bit) at the thought. And how did I let myself go?

I've been working from home for about four years. And while there are advantages, like not having to commute, it does completely negate the need to exercise. When I was living in Shrewsbury, at least, I'd walk to meetings. Then I moved to London, where I lived in Kilburn, where you had to move quickly or else get mugged. But now that I'm in Hackney with Brooky Wook I don't even have to travel to see her. She comes home after work to find me sprawled on the sofa, deep in a bag of crisps, like an actual coach potato.

But standing on the scales, as I was, eating crisps, I realised that if I couldn't change my diet I was going to have to do some exercise. And while I might not be tightening my belt, I am tightening the purse strings, so I worked out that buying a Wii Fit was cheaper than buying a good pair of running shoes. Not only that, but it would overcome any awkwardness I'd feel at running with the Olympic hopefuls in Victoria Park. Plus, if there's anything that's going to get me into exercise it's technology, right?

So now, when Brooky Wook comes home, she finds me off the couch, out of that crisp packet and onto the Balance Board, swinging my hips around an imaginary hula-hoop, punching the shit out of thin air or hitting the negligible slopes of our front room. I don't know if she's any less disturbed.

But, while I might look more 'bunny boiler' than 'gym bunny', I am actually losing weight! 4 lbs, to be precise. And I've got Brooky Wook involved too. The healthy competition has me determined to reach my ideal weight even quicker. Unfortunately that competition has already closed. The Wii Fit tells Brooker that according to her BMI if she gets any thinner she'll be dangerously underweight. So, soon I'll have the added challenge of trying to lose the pounds while my girlfriend tries to gain them.

Stepping off the Balance Board tonight however it looks like I've beaten her at her own game, having gained the 4 lbs that I had just yesterday lost. It makes me wonder how heavy my clothes are! Maybe tomorrow, when she comes home, she'll find me naked atop the Board, lunging at the TV - not necessarily fitter, but having lost weight, all the same. And at least I won't need to buy new trousers.

Wii Fit

Talking-point pen

2009-10-09T10:04:00.000+01:00

I spend most of my time at my computer. And now that I have push email on my phone, it's like I'm carrying around a baby monitor, constantly listening out for the gurgling of an inbox or the wailing of an unread RSS reader.

So it felt very strange indeed to shut down my computer, as I did last week, and sit at a desktop not cluttered with icons and folders but with pens and pencils and actual paper. I thought I'd revisit an old pastime by drawing a relatively new one - my guitar. I'd taken it up when I last eschewed technology, albeit not through choice, when our Internet connection went down at University. (I taught myself how to play 'I Can't Live (If Living Is Without You)' whilst waiting to be reconnected.)

And - do you know what? - it was pretty good! So I signed myself up for a life drawing drop-in session in Islington. "To draw," as I kept telling people. "Not to model!" Like anyone thought that was the case. But it wasn't until I got there that I realised how strange it was - not to be in a room with naked strangers (if anything, it was probably the best way to wean me off the Internet), but to be in a room with strangers altogether...

I work from home and for myself; I rarely have meetings with people I haven't Googled; and I've been with my girlfriend long enough to know all of her friends and for her to know all of mine. And yet there I was, in a room full of strangers, two of them completely undressed, not knowing a single soul.

For the most part it didn't matter. We sat there, scribbling away, trying not to look directly at the penis, as if it were the sun peeking out from a solar eclipse. Occasionally someone would hold up a pencil as if they were trying to block it out completely. But it was quiet and everyone got on with it.

But then the tutor called for a break. 'Oh no!' I thought. 'Chit-chat'. Thinking I could bypass the whole ordeal, I skipped out to the bathroom and stayed as long as I could without appearing to have an actual medical problem. But by the time I got back the students had paired up exactly. There must have been an odd number of attendees - and I was that odd number.
The tutor announced that we had ten minutes left of our break.
'How long is this break?!' I thought. I tried to fill it by alternately looking at my own sketches, which made me feel conceited; by looking at other people's, which made me feel nosy; or by looking at the models, who were now draped in sarongs, sipping coffee. That made me feel more like a pervert than when they were naked. And so I realised that I had no choice but to make conversation.

"That's an interesting pen," I heard one student remark to another. It was my way in, I thought. I'd mention the pen.
"Yeah, you squeeze it to control the flow of ink," replied the other. They were both student age of the conventional sense. Student students.
"That's an interesting pen!" I interjected. It was only when they turned to face me that I realised how close we were all sitting. We nearly bumped noses. There was no way I couldn't have overheard their conversation.
"Yeah," she went on, looking bemused. "You, er, squeeze it."
"Okay, that's time!" shouted the tutor, signalling the end of the break. I wasn't sure whether I was relieved that the agony of breaktime was over or disappointed that I hadn't moved beyond pen chat to redeem myself as a conversational virtuoso. I didn't get another chance. In fact, "that's an interesting pen," was the only thing I said all night. And - do you know what? - it wasn't even an interesting pen. It was a ball-point.

Luddite to lady

2009-03-24T15:57:00.000Z

I've been using Twitter for about three years now and have never, in that time, been approached by anyone urging me to 'tweet'. In fact, I think the only conversations I've had on the topic have been with sceptics, urging me to stop. So, where this fear comes from - that one day soon 'Tweeps' all over the world will rise up and force us to open accounts and update them with the oft and ill quoted "I'm having a sandwich" line - is something of a mystery to me.

And, I think, there are two ways of dealing with mysteries; that is, dealing with that which we don't understand. You can, like the great mystery solvers - Holmes, Marple, Fletcher, Creek - attempt to unravel them. Or you can fear them, run and hide. Or really go for it - galvanise your fear into a pitchfork and torch-waving angry mob. Well, I don't much like crowds, so I'm going up the Jonathan Creek route with this one. And I'm taking a paddle.

I spent the early part of this weekend politely batting comments from a techno-sceptic on a number of topics, from records versus MP3s to e-book readers versus paperbacks. And I'll discuss them here, even though I don't think they're really versus debates.

But I think there's a word for the kind of person with whom I was debating and that's a prosophobe - someone who is afraid of progress. You could say that she was a luddite, a term that has come to mean an opponent of technological progress. It comes from the social movement of 19th century workmen, who destroyed laboursaving machinery and stood against the Industrial Revolution. But since the debate ended with her gently pulling out her iPod nano and not by flinging it across the floor in protest, I don't think that would be quite fair.

To be fair would be to say that even the luddites would find it difficult to stick to their principles in the 21st century. My prosophobic friend mourned the death of vinyl, but pulled an iPod out of her bag; she derided the Twittersphere in a Facebook status update; and I imagine she wants to take London off the Google Map over this Street View controversy.

As a luddite might realise, that's a lot to smash up. But a cure for what scares you, as a prosophobe, is to realise not that the new replaces the old but that it lives alongside it. Take, for example, the e-book reader versus the paperback debate.
"It's just ridiculous," she said. "What will people put on their shelves?"
"Well, books." I said. "You can have both."

Books are, as Stephen Fry reminds us, themselves a technology and one that many called, at their advent, the work of the devil. "They only went and taught people how to make e-book readers, didn't they?" I said.

As Fry puts it, "You don't throw away your books when you buy a computer. You keep both. The beauty of living in the present day is you don't abandon the past. The past co-exists."

And the future is forged by the curious, not by the fearful. The greatest mystery solvers weren't Holmes, Marple, Fletcher or even Creek. They were Darwin, Edison, Curie, Obama. And, if they were around today, I reckon, they'd be on Twitter. Obama is.

And, I shouldn't say this in the same breath, so am I! Follow me at: twitter.com/sansharma

Knowing meme, knowing you

2008-11-20T13:48:00.000Z

Quick question, pop quiz fans: What do I have in common with Rick Astley, Snakes on a Plane and a golf club-wielding fat kid? No, it's not that we'd be terrible company on a long-haul flight (I may look like a terrorist in all my hirsuteness, but I couldn't hijack a second bag of peanuts).

The answer is, we're all subjects of Internet memes - a sort of web 2.0 inside joke, a catchphrase or concept that's spread quickly from person to person via the Internet.

The movie, Snakes on a Plane, inspired a raft of parodies, songs and fan fiction; YouTube made a reluctant star of the 'Star Wars kid' (now, sadly, under psychiatric care "for an indefinite amount of time"); and the recent surprise (though not undeserving) recipient of this year's Best Act Ever MTV award, Rick Astley, was the subject of a phenomenon called Rickrolling, whereby web surfers were tricked into watching the 1987 music video, "Never Gonna Give You Up".

Similarly, users of the social networking website, Facebook, might be mildly irritated to click the status updates of their friends, which are beginning to lead to my website. Mine changed last week to "San Sharma is sansharma.com"; it was followed by similar URL-toting updates from my girlfriend and now two of her colleagues. In the nicest way possible (and in a way that won't alarm my girlfriend), I'm viral! And my web statistics are beginning to show. Facebook is the top referrer, followed by Google, where one visitor found me with the query "massage parlours shropshire" (I'm on page 8 of the results, which says more about said visitor's appetite than it does my website).

Let's hope I don't befall the same fate as other Internet memettes (though I'd rather a Best Act Ever award than a lifetime of psychiatric care). On that note, I'll leave you with my favourite of the memes, viewed an estimated 1 billion times - ladies and gentlemen, the Star Wars Kid.

"It's a small world..."

2008-11-13T09:34:00.000Z

Welcome, if it works, to version 2.0 of my website. To quote Barack Obama (quoting Sam Cooke), it's been a long time coming, but tonight, change has come to sansharma.com.

And it very nearly didn't.

I've switched domain registrants and web hosts so many times over the last few years that I found myself in an infinite loop, unable to remember usernames, passwords or even the companies with whom I'd parted cash. Once I did, I began working behind-the-scenes, tinkering with code and little bits of script, which had all the appeal and terror of stepping off a Disneyland ride and seeing how all the Animatronics work. Now that it's done, I hope you'll find that version 2.0 has more to offer, including the full archive of my blog (and new posts!), my portfolio, including my books, and a growing audio and video page.

I've pulled the lever, I'm hopping back on my carriage and I hope you'll join me for the ride. Don't forget to subscribe to my RSS feed and add me up on Twitter. And drop me a line, by visiting my contact page.

Lots of love,

Tales from the crypt

2008-08-12T13:46:00.000+01:00

For a self-proclaimed (and obsessed) geek, it came as something of a blow when those vanguards of vanity, Google, announced that I'd reached my peak in 2004. If 'Googling' yourself is considered an ego stroke, then analysing your name via new service, Google Insights, is like checking into a Thai massage parlour. Except, in my case, without the 'happy ending'. The service reported that I was most popular in the United States, followed by India and then the UK. (It seems I'd failed to make an impression on Canada.) It also generated a graph of 'Interest over time' that sloped steadily downwards from 2004 when I was first started blogging, to the present day, as I write to you now, following a four month hiatus.

So, why the silent treatment?

Well, since I last wrote, back in April, I seem to have found myself in love's death-grip. I was already struggling to update the blog when I met Brooky Wook and then embarked on a relationship completely at odds with the legacy of this website: healthy, functional, romantic. For what is essentially a catalogue of my dating failures, is being lucky in love the final nail in what was already the dusty coffin of my personal blog?

Don't worry, dear readers, there's room for one more in this coffin made for two. I won't be cracking open its lid anytime soon and clambering six feet up to a spring meadow of bunny rabbits and love hearts. Being in a relationship brings with it a whole new set of social faux pas, one of which I'm reminded this week, as Brooky Wook prepares to meet my family for the first time.

I was in a similar position last weekend, having been invited to her grandad's 87th birthday lunch in Canterbury. Her dad picked us up from the train station and drove us to the Wook household, where I nervously approached the front door, opened quite suddenly by a man waving what appeared to be a walking stick in the air. This did not calm my nerves. Instead, they rattled with the bag of gifts that Brooky Wook and I had bought her grandad. I pushed them towards the man's free hand like I was popping a flower in the nose of a gun. I smiled, wished him a Happy Birthday and watched as both stick and face dropped.

"It's not my birthday," he said. "I'm [Brooky Wook's] uncle."
"Ah," I said, taking a closer look at the man I'd mistaken for an 87 year old grandfather - tall, fortysomething, with only a hint of grey in his full head of hair. "I know that! ...But it was your birthday recently, right?"
"Yes. In January."
"Well," I said, easing the gifts back from his hand. "Happy... belated birthday!"

I stepped inside and saw Grandfather Wook, behind thick, bottle-top glasses, being helped from his rocking chair by two grandchildren and a walking stick more traditional than that held in his son's hand. Uncle Wook, I learned, had just returned from Kenya, and the stick was a cattle herding staff, used by the Maasai tribe. I imagine he'd thought of using it for a different purpose that day.

But as I left with Brooky-Wook I realised that I hadn't buried social faux pas when I found love. It may be a many splendored thing, lift us up where we belong, be all that we need, but it doesn't free us from the awkwardness that has been the legacy of this blog since 2004. If anything, it makes it worse.

Old clothes, new gags at 'Dude Patrol'

2008-04-09T15:59:00.000+01:00

I didn't have an excuse. But believe me, I wracked my brains. I wanted nothing less than to go to an interactive comedy night, an hour and a half away in Stoke Newington. But I'm dating again and have fallen into a routine of taking turns to "host". 'Captain Dude and the Dude Patrol', at Ryan's Bar on the Stoke Newington High Street, fell on her day ('her' henceforth referred to as 'my Brooky Wook').

Accepting Brooky Wook's invitation, I thought, might make my turn - inviting her to my ex-girlfriend's house for dinner - a little easier (on me, I imagine, not so much on her). So I said, 'yes,' and rode that Overground, somewhat reluctantly, to the scary, north-east corner of zone 2.

Call me an old curmudgeon, but the idea of painting, of making things, dressing up in old, jumble-sale clothes and competing for prizes, all of which was promised by its Facebook event description, made me want to stay home, wash my hair, catch up on my junk mail correspondence - anything to avoid the kind of interaction with strangers that sounded about as fun as being mugged.

I saw a guy at a comedy night, right here in West Hampstead, whose entire set consisted of a conversation with an audience member, about as engaging as being collared by a high street charity collector. By the end of it, he looked about ready to hand over his Direct Debit details, just so that he could go on with his life.

"The comedy's not amazing," Brooky Wook said, as we took our seats. "But the atmosphere's great." The atmosphere was pretty tense, from where I was sitting. I was terrified of being picked by the compère, Tom Bell, whose sprightly androgyny reminded me of a theme park animal trainer, who once plucked me from a crowd of otherwise happy holiday makers to perform with what wasn't the real Lassie but what looked good enough to pass.

I was 10 years old, and arrived with my family just before show time, managing to squeeze onto the front row of the 'Animal Actors on Location' attraction at Universal Studios Florida. I was aware that because of my proximity to the stage and the ease with which I could get there and back with minimum interruption to the crowd, I had the highest chance of being picked by the animal trainer. I was as terrified of him as I was of the dog, so I did my best to catch neither pair of eyes. But I guess they both smelled my fear and, before I knew it, I was on the stage, shaking Lassie's paw to my obvious embarrassment. (Why can't dogs smell that?)

But here, in the basement of Ryan's Bar, the front row was the only row. I took it with a big swig of my drink and finally relaxed into my seat. If Universal Studios wasn't such a 'dry' theme park, I might have had a better experience. But last night, at 'Captain Dude and the Dude Patrol', I had a surprisingly good time.

Bell made for an excellent compère, as comfortable on stage as he was in the massive "sleeping bag-come-coat" he picked out for himself from the jumble-sale. His comedy partner, Ed Weeks, was late, but no less funny. His punishment from Bell was the accusation of racism, eliciting a chorus of boos from the crowd, triggered by a hand signal designed by Bell in Weeks' absence.

Pippa Evans put in a good turn, acting alongside Bell in episode two of 'Plaice Invaders', the completely improvised soap opera set in a fish & chip shop in space. All of this, set to a soundtrack of the worst charity shop vinyl Bell could find and all the laughter we, in our crowd of 15, could muster.

"If you like finding furniture on the street," the Facebook event description went on, "you'll love Dude Patrol." I do and I did. But unlike stumbling across a broken wicker chair or a discarded coffee table, there was nothing wooden about these dudes. It's a comedy night worth checking out, if you live in the area. I might just make that one and and a half hour journey back out there, next month.

Facebook Chat: A poke too far?

2008-04-08T14:43:00.000+01:00

My sister, Suman, is late to the party that is social networking. At 29, she graduated before Facebook became the big man on campus it is today and left high school while MySpace was still a twinkle in Tom Anderson's eye.

In the last month, she's joined both networks, muddled them up in her head and failed in her attempts to stay relevant by referring to each as MyFace. (I had to stop her from inviting friends to meet there. It was a conversation I never wanted to have with my sister.)

Just as Suman's getting to know Facebook (and her friends in a more intimate way than she imagined), I'm trying to distance myself from the social network that's costing UK business over £130m a day and 233 million hours of 'lost time' every month.

I'll be running for the hills when it rolls out its new instant messaging feature in the next couple of weeks. It's hitting some networks and the reviews are pretty good, but Facebook's already given me a second inbox to battle, not to mention another Wall to climb, and I'm terrified that I'll never keep up with friends, nor will I want to know that they're getting a sandwich, packing for their holidays or being surprised at the result of a football match, reality TV show or STD test.

It's hard enough trying to sneak onto Facebook without someone noticing that you haven't replied to their message ("oh, I haven't checked," doesn't really work). Now its new chat features promise to bring back into fashion a certain keyboard shortcut dance I used to perform when avoiding friends on instant messengers. (If I log on and then off immediately, you'll know what just happened...)

It's not too late for my sister, Suman - she's not yet hooked. However, by making Facebook a more real time experience, its developers are hoping session length will go through the roof. But it might just be the poke that pushes users, like me, over the edge.

The Bitch Is Back

2008-04-07T12:14:00.000+01:00

I entertain by picking brains
Sell my soul by dropping names
I don't like those, my god, what's that?
Oh, it's full of nasty habits when the bitch gets back

'The Bitch Is Back', Elton John

I'm back on the blogosphere, guys, riding it all the way to your web browser, like an excited child on a space hopper. And what better way to return - out of breath - than with an Elton John lyric. (That should put to bed those 'gay' rumours.) Expect more brain-picking, name-dropping, gender-bending nastiness soon.

If, like Elton John suggests, there are bad habits, one might be going AWOL. I do apologise for that. And now that I'm back from my little sabbatical, let me explain.

I've been going through a period of change. Yes readers, puberty has hit me like a tonne of hairy bricks. Not only that, but after three years of working as Creative Director of Redbrick Enterprises Ltd., and on it's flagship product, Enterprise Nation, I've left to go freelance. The decision came about after a series of escalating threats led to my departure.

"Right," I said. "I'm going to leave!"
"Leave then," said managing director, Emma Jones.
"Okay, I'm leaving."
"Go!"
"I'm going." This went on for some time.
"On the count of three," I think I might have said. "1... 2... 2 and a half... 2 and three quarters..." Until, all of a sudden, I'd gone!

I'm still doing some work for Enterprise Nation - and everything's fine! - but I'm designing, writing and presenting for other companies too. You should expect this blog to change somewhat as well. Its focus is going to shift to pop culture, technology and business. But don't be surprised to find sprinklings of the old personal stuff. Inappropriate stuff, if anything.

Old habits, as they say, die hard. Nasty habits reincarnate.

So, welcome back to my blog, if you've been here before. If it's your first time, subscribe to my RSS feed, so you don't miss my updates, which I'm going to try and make more often. In the meantime, enjoy this video from the original "bitch". It's Elton John, with a pole-dancing Pamela Anderson, and a performance that I think really captures the essence of this blog: the roaring crowd, the sex appeal, the fat guy at the keyboard...

The Bitch Is Back, Elton John

Homeworking in action

2008-03-12T12:28:00.001Z

Homeworking in action, originally uploaded by San Sharma.

Coconut Boy

2008-02-02T11:19:00.000Z

While other mums worry about their sons turning to drugs, getting their girlfriends pregnant or joining some sort of gang, mine is concerned with matters more spiritual. (Besides, I don't have a girlfriend, I'm a responsible member of an online community and I just turned down a line of coke because I had a "terrible blocked nose".) The way my mum sees it, the only road I'm heading down is the one clearly marked, 'Identity Crisis'.

"Coconut boy," she calls me. "Brown on the outside, white on the inside."

While there might, at least, be parts of me that resemble a coconut - brown, covered in hair and full of a white, milky fluid - at this time of the year, when my colour fades, it's quite easy to 'lose my roots' when they're not so etched onto my face in hues of burnt sienna, sepia and mahogany. I'm invited to fewer dinner parties, considered less effective as a token person of colour, and stopped far less by police men.

It takes just a two hour journey up north and one weekend with my family to bring that muddy colour back to my sweet cheeks and to remind me that my roots don't stop in Shropshire, but in a land far, far away, to which ex-pat relatives still squint and admire what remains of a changing culture.

I found out this morning that my cousin, a graduate from Kings College London, is in India to get married.
"That's crazy!" I said. "Has he even met her before?"
"Oh yeah," my mum replied, nonchalantly. "At the engagement party, I think."

He's my second cousin in as many years to go east to find the perfect Indian bride. Some send for the brides to come over to the UK. Others, like my cousin, get married in India with a view to bring their brides home once 'the paperwork' is ready.

On the one hand, I think it sort of represents a failure, as if the groom-to-be was no match made in heaven for the British Indian girls he would have seen on the arranged marriage circuit (which I like to imagine is like the selection process of American Idol; Simon Cowell as busty bride-to-be).

On the other hand, it's like the son or, more often, his parents, look to India for the 'old fashioned decency' quickly escaping British Indian girls. (It's being replaced by ambition, I'm pleased to report.)

What they don't know - or fail to see - is that the kind of girl that insists on a wedding register at the UK Border & Immigration Agency, is probably pretty ambitious. And that India is going through it's own (belated) sexual revolution (after ironically triggering western 'free love' movements of the 1960s and 1970s, with the rediscovery of its ancient culture of sexual liberalism).

The pursuit and purchase of the 'perfect Indian bride' might be more a case for Trading Standards than Border and Immigration control. Ambition and sexual liberalism is completely at odds with the requirements of my cousin, his parents and other British Indians who look to India for 'old fashioned decency', as impossible to attain as the 'impaling on a stake' position of one of its most old-fashioned texts, the Kama Sutra.

Nevertheless, I wish them luck. If I'm like a coconut, and life a box of chocolates, an arranged marriage is like a curry. It's hot, it's exotic, you can pick it up or have it delivered, but soon enough that shit's going to really hurt.

Flickr

2008-01-23T02:42:00.001Z

This is a test post from , a fancy photo sharing thing.

Juno is pretty cool

2008-01-23T02:12:00.000Z

"You're like the coolest person I've ever met," Ellen Page says to a knobbly knee'd Michael Cera at the climax of Juno. "And you don't even have to try, you know."
"I try really hard, actually."

Juno was Fox Searchlight's sleeper hit of 2007, grossing over $85 million in the US (after a modest budget of only $7.5 million). It comes out in the UK on February 8th and I was there at its VIP screening at the Soho Hotel in London last week.

Why am I dressed like a dork?

(If you're reading this through my RSS feed, you might not get the accompanying picture. In any case, it's probably a sensible question to ask - and on most occasions.)

My housemate Bill and I were there to help out a friend, whose event management company was putting on the screening. She needed a couple of geeks to dress up as characters from the film, greet guests and pose for pictures.

"You're like the geekiest guy I know," she said. "You don't even have to try." She was right. I couldn't claim, like Michael Cera's character in Juno, that the accolade was the result of any sort of effort. So, of course, I agreed to do it.

Not knowing much about the film however, I was somewhat unprepared for my costume: a sports vest and shorts, pull-up socks, a wrist and headband. Nevertheless, I left my shame with my trousers, in the cloak room, while Bill joked that stripping down to a pair shorts for £50 might be construed as the behaviour of a couple of "smack heads." We emerged from our dressing room all the same, regretfully sober and ready to face a room full of celebrities.

I joked with British soul singer, Beverley Knight, formed one point of a hip-hop love triangle with So Solid Crew's Lisa Mafia, even went for a post-screening drink with star of zombie film, 28 Weeks Later (and new best friend), Imogen Poots.

But the real star of the night - it's not difficult to say - was the movie itself. A sophomore effort from Thank You for Smoking director, Jason Reitman, Juno is a smart, funny and charming teen comedy, with real affection and wit. Go see it when it comes out here on February 8th (or catch it while you still can, if it's already showing in your country).

It's got an awesome soundtrack (that I reckon will do for The Mouldy Peaches what Garden State did for The Shins); it moves the plot along without being intrusive (take note, Sondre Lerche). And at one point, at the end of the movie, it sort of becomes the plot.

I won't ruin the ending for you. But when the film had finished, and we changed back into our own clothes, Bill joked that it felt good to be 'cool' again. As he did, I caught myself in the changing room mirror, one hand pushing my glasses up the bridge of my nose, the other, buttoning the cardigan that snuggled under my second-hand blazer. I thought to myself that however hard I try, I'll never quite be cool. But that was okay.

In the film, Michael Cera's character got the girl. And there I was at the end of an awesome party, having met some pretty interesting people, £50 better off and about to go for a drink with a movie star? I suppose that is pretty cool.

Catch Juno in the UK on February 8th; find out more on the link below.

Juno: Official Site - [Fox Searchlight]

New hymns

2007-12-25T00:50:00.000Z

I'm back home with my parents for the holidays, where keeping up with the Jones' has escalated to a point where my family is no longer honouring its own religion, but instead joining the neighbours for midnight mass at the local Catholic church.

It's not typical behaviour for a Hindu family, but then mine has never been a typical Hindu family. Neither has it shied from Catholicism: My sisters and I went to the Catholic school opposite our house. (We got Christ and convenience - it was a 2 for 1 deal.)

As such, we knew what to expect from the service - lots of lengthy Bible passages, lots of time to 'reflect', lots of standing up and sitting down.

I didn't, however, expect there to be quite so many apologies. Soon after we arrived we joined the congregation in one massive plea for forgiveness.

It was a funny way to start, I thought. "Let's get this party started," I imagined the Father saying. "With a big fat, 'I'm sorry'." I wasn't sure why we were apologising (we weren't even late), but I joined in all the same.

It wasn't long, however, until my complicity turned into awkward silence. I was the only member of the congregation not saying 'amen,' 'thanks be to God,' or 'Kyrie Eleison' (I didn't even know what the last one meant, but I liked to think it was Jamaican patois); I was probably the only one censoring parts of Christmas carols, by refusing to sing them.

I wondered how the rest of my family could, not least because the church insisted on performing songs impossible to pick up. New ones, in an attempt to be relevant, employed all sorts of strange 'blue' notes, unpredictable key changes and song structures that eschewed the tried and tested verse/chorus formula of the last hundred or so years.

But then, I thought, that's not unlike my family at all: blue, unpredictable, unusual; also, unlike new hymns, relevant, at least to me. And, in a weird way, honouring its own religion.

No-one watching me.

2007-12-08T12:45:00.000Z

"You don't want a girlfriend," I was recently reminded. "You want an audience." And despite her best efforts to, er, buck the trend, I went home alone that night and showed her that, in fact, I wanted neither. Oh, I showed her alright...

But waking up alone, again, I wondered whether there was any truth in her observation. I kind of wish I'd stuck around for its attempted deconstruction. But in all honesty, it's a fact that's been pointed out to me before.

I met her on a blind date, we'd e-mailed each other before the first meeting and she'd had the foresight to Google me in advance. Perhaps to check that I wasn't a suspected terrorist, a registered sex offender or a Tory.

But what she didn't expect was three pages of results, the first of which led her to this blog. "I have a lot less sex than people imagine," were the first words she must have read. And the dates that followed proved that I can, in fact, have even less sex than that.

But I appreciated her honesty in admitting her research, more so than her awkward first date questions. "Who is the real San Sharma?" She asked. "The man or the domain?"

I didn't expect questions any more soul searching than 'what's your favourite colour?' from a first date, but hers got me thinking.

Is being single intrinsic to my personality? Or to my persona, as a "single, metrosexual, twentysomething, British Indian male", as per the blurb above?

"What I'm asking is," she continued. "Can you have a girlfriend and an audience?" I didn't think that was an invitation to tape us having sex, so I told her that, at this time, I didn't think the two were possible. And walked home, with no-one watching me.

In Jobs we trust

2007-11-09T08:53:00.000Z

It's the age old dilemma: the secular world versus the spiritual; the things you can't touch and the things you can't stop touching. And this Friday, the conundrum continues, when Apple's long awaited iPhone lands in the UK - on Diwali.

I'd booked the day off work, picked out a traditional outfit, planned my route to the temple (casual shirt, hipster jeans, Central Line to the Regent Street Apple Store). I was all set to get in line and get an iPhone (at 6:02pm - its official launch time, inspired by Apple's O2 partnership), when my mum called.

"Don't forget Diwali on Friday," she said.

Diwali is the Hindu festival of lights. And although the iPhone boasts - amongst other things - a backlit touchscreen, queueing for one on Regent Street is not, apparently, an appropriate way to give thanks to God.

At £269, with a minimum 18 month contract, the iPhone is rather an appropriate way to give thanks to Steve Jobs, blue jeaned and turtle necked co-founder and CEO of Apple, who in September announced the iPhone's arrival in the UK.

"We can't wait to let UK customers get their hands on it," he said.

I can't wait either, Steve. But instead, at 6:02pm tonight, I'll be putting my hands together and celebrating the return of Lord Rama. I'll also be praying that there'll be iPhones in stock by the time I get to an Apple store on Saturday.

But why am I so blasphemingly excited?

Well, the iPhone is, to the mobile phone market, what the iPod is to MP3 players. Neither are the first, but both are quite easily the best - light years ahead of anything else - and clear solutions to the problems that have plagued consumers since computers could talk to peripherals.

For years, you've been able to synchronise your mobile phone with your computer - it's nothing new - but, honestly, who does it (without wincing)?

The software has been clunky, the hardware flimsy and the whole process of navigating your phone awkward and messy. Apple cuts through that predictable haze with a phone that's a joy to use (I know because I've used one), and built on the iPod/iTunes model that's served an unprecedented 119 million customers.

At its price, and worrying O2 lock in, the iPhone might take some time to reach those kind of sales. I don't doubt that we'll see a price drop in the next year (or an iPhone nano), but in the meantime, expect to see iPhone-flourishes in all new mobile phones, as manufacturers step up their game, as they have post iPod.

It looks like we can all give thanks to Jobs. So, this weekend, put your hands together, in your pocket or on your iPhone and have a Happy Diwali/iPhone Day.

iPhone - [via Apple.com/uk]

Get ready for iPhone

2007-11-09T08:48:00.000Z

Apple has its own 'Get ready for iPhone' guide, with advice on how to prepare your contacts, calendar, music and videos. In anticipation of tonight's UK launch, I've prepared my own pre-purchase to-do list.

'Finger tips'
Before you reach your grubby hands into your soon-to-be empty pockets tonight, make sure your fingers are worthy of the iPhone's gorgeous 3.5-inch touch screen display.

It takes at least fifteen seconds to wash your hands properly, which - according to a dedicated NHS hand washing website - is about the amount of time it takes to sing the 'Happy Birthday' song twice through. The site includes a 10 step guide, but if you can memorise the routine ("Step 6: backs of fingers to opposing palms with fingers interlocked"), you might as well learn this.

Look the part
You might think that buying an iPhone is your ticket to the lifestyles of the rich and courageous. But remember, tonight's launch is for the first generation model, so expect to see some early adopters and hardcore Apple fan boys in the queue.

Plus, this isn't San Francisco.

So, stand out from the crowd of the great unwashed, the forum fanatics and - dare I say - the Windows users, and pick an outfit that's casual, clean and as close to Justin Long as you can manage. (Unless, of course, you're a girl, in which case wear nothing and make a queue of geeks very happy.)

Make a nest
You're going to want to play with your iPhone right away (make a few 'emergency calls only' before you activate it), but think about how you'll carry it from one curious admirer to another. Don't just stuff it into your jeans' pocket with your keys, redundant iPod nano and Wii controller.

If you're going to put it in your jeans, make sure you wash them first, inside out with the pockets reversed. Fortunately, the iPhone gets a winter launch here in the UK, so most punters will be wearing jackets to brave the queue. Pick one with a lined inner pocket and place your iPhone with its screen facing you.

My reputation recedes me

2007-11-02T10:16:00.000Z

I have a lot less sex than people imagine. In fact, it's people's imagination, I think, that's preventing me from doing so (that and my strange face, probably). In their heads, I'm sprawled across a boudoir chaise longue, explosive kegs between my legs, dining on three square meals of girls, girls, girls...

When in actual fact, I've an appetite like a python. Eyes bigger than my belly (already pretty big), I get all wrapped up, bite off more than I can chew and lie bloated for another year. (The resemblance doesn't extend to my anatomy, unfortunately. I'm more like a grass snake in that respect.)

But I met this girl on Monday, and I was hoping things would follow suit like the Craig David song. But instead she said, "I bet you do alright with the ladies."

Now, I'm no gambling man, but either way, I figure, is a losing hand. There seemed little reward in betting against her, but there was something about her assumption that seemed to lower my odds. It was as if she was saying, "You do alright. You don't need this."

Hang on, I thought. This isn't like tipping a lawyer or sending Donald Trump a tenner. If an athlete does well in the Olympics give him a gold medal, surely. Applaud him at the finish line. But here I was, waiting for the starting pistol.

"Oh, I do alright," I said, ironically. Unfortunately, the pub was loud, and my self-deprecation construed as declaration, as if I was laying my cards on the table and revealing aces.

But she'd failed to see my joker and raised her eyebrows. If there was a starting pistol, I thought, I'd shot myself in the foot.And would lie bloated for another year.

'Talk' on sale

2007-11-01T20:01:00.000Z

I don't often give special shout outs on this here blog. Let's face it, I don't post a great deal either. But there's a sale over at my mate's blog and talk, it turns out, is cheap. You should check it out on the link below or via my blog roll.

Talk It Is Cheap is the true story of a single, chauvinistic, twentysomething, English man in New York.

Head on over and leave comments.

Talk It Is Cheap [Peter Woods]

"May contain traces of boyfriend."

2007-10-14T12:06:00.000+01:00

"I can't do this," she says, pulling away.
"Why?" I ask.
"I've got a boyfriend."

So, this is the conversation that marks the end of so many of my dates. It's become as familiar to me as picking up the cheque, saying goodnight and poking on Facebook. (It's usually the only poking I do that night.)

And it's making me wonder what it is about me - or my dates - that makes this conversation so familiar. Do they think I'm gay? A "Will" to their "Grace"? Are they shopping for a new boyfriend (but "just browsing, thanks")? Or, like Schrödinger's cat, does the boyfriend only appear at the end of the date, when I take a gamble and try to open the box (so to speak)?

In any case, it terrifies my friends in relationships. "It makes me wonder what my girlfriend was really doing on Saturday night," my housemate says. "Come to think of it, what were you doing on Saturday night?"

Well, I was probably having that conversation, like a disclaimer tagged onto the end of a radio advert, muttered quickly and incomprehensible, a list of possible side effects - "may cause mild embarrassment, sudden loss of date and that sinking feeling that this is all too familiar..."

Alphabet Street

2007-09-16T11:47:00.000+01:00

When my dad argues that there are thirty more letters in the Hindi alphabet than there are in the English, he refers to the languages as 'ours' and 'theirs', respectively. That's because he's talking to our Indian visitors, who've travelled from Madras, by way of New Jersey, last week to London, and now to Shropshire, where they're staying with my parents and discussing - at length - the respective strengths and weaknesses of Hindi and English. There can't be enough letters in either, I think, as I listen to them debate in an odd fusion of both languages.

Queer eye for the fat guy.

2007-08-14T00:32:00.000+01:00

Having "outed" myself as a metrosexual, I've done very little to maintain a lifestyle in keeping with the culture. If I were a homosexual it'd be like not liking musicals or not having a small dog. As it goes I'm not. And I really ought not make such sweeping - and possibly offensive - generalisations.

The fact of the matter is, I make a terrible metrosexual. Sure, I moisturise. I use a range of hair products. But my sexuality, my...metrosity is tepid, to say the least.

I'm terribly out of shape, I eat crap and I shop at Topman - almost exclusively. I've never bought an Armani suit, I don't care for fruit and I wouldn't know my yoga pilates from my yoga flames.

I've decided, if I'm going to do this properly, if I'm going to write the "true story of a single, metrosexual, twentysomething, British Indian male," I'm going to have to shape up or ship out. (Besides, I figure I can't do much about my being twentysomething or British Indian.)

So tomorrow I'm going for a run.

It's either that or Annie Get Your Gun, a Chihuahua and another closet from which to emerge. But I'm pretty sure it's easier to turn a fat boy slim than a straight guy queer.

Meet the metrosexual - [Salon]

Gone fishing.

2007-08-09T01:14:00.000+01:00

I've been writing my little heart out for the past week or so, working on some stuff for the business, hence the somewhat slower than usual blogging.

In fact, I've temporarily relocated to a quiet spot in Ireland, in an effort to concentrate on my words, which, it turns out, was something of a deft move, since I can't understand most of those uttered by the locals anyway.

My business partner and I just had dinner in Kinsale and nodded politely through the specials menu, which we're pretty sure was mostly fish; she had lobster (something I vowed to never do again) and last night we saw a movie called The Squid and the Whale.

It's been like a fishing trip so far. I'm back on dry land next week - expect more stories then!

Budge

2007-07-30T23:29:00.001+01:00

Hey, it's just dawned on me that some people may still be visiting my Blogspot even though I've moved. In case you didn't know you can continue my adventures - those of "a single, metrosexual, twentysomething, British Indian male" over at www.sansharma.com.

15 minutes

2007-07-28T13:16:00.000+01:00

Since the Stephen King/Rob Reiner chillfest, Misery (1990), having a "number one fan" is an altogether terrifying prospect. (A number two or three is fine.)

In the film, a novelist, played by James Caan, is rescued from a car accident in a blizzard, by a particularly fat Kathy Bates. Wait, it gets scarier...

It turns out she's his "number one fan" and has no intention of letting him go. She also lops off his feet with a hammer (don't click this link if you're squimish!).

It's no wonder then that I had cold feet (or any feet at all) when I agreed to meet one of my fans last week. ('One of' suggests there are more; 'one and only' may be closer to the truth.) She'd read my blog, saw that I'd moved to London and wanted to meet up.

Why the hell not? I thought.

Well, there was one prettyyy big reason why not:

Kathy Bates.

But anyway, I chose to look beyond the Bates and found instead a very charming, not at all psychotic, PhD student.

And it got me thinking, perhaps prematurely, about the notion of fame (and the fifteen minutes of it promised us by Andy Warhol). I realise that it hasn't yet touched me in the same way that it did, say, Princess Diana, but it has sort of tickled me on the nose.

The PhD student knew only a persona, pixelated and preserved on this blog; a "true story of a single, metrosexual, twentysomething, British Indian male."

And while one fan does not a fan club make, I imagine it's just a matter of time before I'm shaving my head and checking into rehab, dangling a baby over a balcony ledge, or dying in a high speed car chase in Paris.

That's a lot to cram into my fifteen minutes.

Harry Krishna

2007-07-19T23:33:00.000+01:00

My mate, Peter Woods, kindly pointed out that the Harry Potter pictured on the cover of the new book bears a striking resemblance to a certain...me!

It's uncanny! To the point that he actually looks Asian. Check it out.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows [Amazon.co.uk]

Things not to do on a date.

2007-07-19T08:49:00.000+01:00

In all the time I've been single (which totals around 18 years), I've learned three things about dating:

Don't get hideously drunk.

Don't order lobster.

Don't arrange a second date in Cyberspace (I'll explain, even though it sounds inexplicable).

Interestingly enough, I learned all of these lessons in one sitting, on a date in Exmouth Market just last week.

1. Don't get hideously drunk.
"Hideous" may be too strong a word, but I was certainly "buzzed." I know this because I started banging on about a half-baked revolution in which we all "just love one another (why can't we just love one another?)." So, as a general rule, try and keep as drunk if not less drunk than your date.

2. Don't order lobster.
"Compliment her on her shoes," Beth advised, before the date. "It's more specific than 'you look nice,' and less cheesy than 'you've got amazing eyes'..."

So, as it turned out, my date did have pretty amazing eyes, but I couldn't get a good look at her shoes from where I was sitting. That was until the waitress came over and offered up the very same compliment to my date. Not wanting her to muscle in on my game (which is pretty sad, when a waitress can do that), I saw my opportunity and chimed in with a perhaps overly enthusiastic, "Yes! Your shoes are amazing!"

I was too late, of course, and my compliment, now really an afterthought, had no real positive impact. It only served to distract me from the real reason the waitress was standing there, complimenting the hell out of my date.

And so, for some reason, I ordered lobster. And then proceeded to wrestle with the animal, break the thing apart and eat its insides across the table from my date.
My advice? Order anything but lobster.

3. Don't arrange a second date in Cyberspace.
So, sozzled and strewn with lobster meat and exoskeleton, I was in no fit state to conclude the date in any way that was appropriate. Instead of suggesting we meet again, that I call, or even that we move to a position more conducive to kissing, I turned away from my date, ever so slightly, pointed over my shoulder and said, "well, the tube's this way," and, "you should, er, Facebook me sometime."

It sounded like something from the Chandler Bing school of shitty dating, updated for the 21st century (dating 2.0, if you will). And as soon as I said it I turned, looked down at my shoes, seasoned ever so slightly with lobster and white wine, and thought, did I actually just say that?

SuperPoke!

2007-07-03T21:24:00.000+01:00

When I was younger - maybe 13 - some kind, possibly sympathetic soul told me that when girls were into guys they just ignored them.

Imagine how I got on, all lanky limbs and awful hair, thinking that every girl I passed, eyes glued to the pavement, was secretly admiring me: tall and thin, ugly and assured.

God knows how else I would have made it through my teens.

But 10 years on and I'm beginning to seriously question that small piece of advice. It may have got me through my teens, but it sure as hell won't get me through my 20s.

If it were true then London loves me. In fact, by that logic, I got a whole lot of love at the pub last night. Indeed, it's a wonder I didn't get raped on the Tube home.

Now, of course, you're spoiled for choice when it comes to indicating your interest. Glances on the Tube are generally ill-advised, especially at night. But, ladies, when you get home, why not log on to Craigslist and post about your "missed connection", in the hope that Mr Right-Across-the-Carriage will reply.

Here's one from a few of weeks ago:

Victoria Line, Monday Evening, discussed Harry Potter

Going North on the Victoria Line, sitting across from you, talking to my friend about how we still haven't gone to King's Cross to have our pictures taken between Platforms 9 and 10. You said you bet we'd meet on the train again a week from now, and I still wouldn't have had my picture taken. I said I'd get it done the next day on my way to see the Tower of London.

I only realised later that I should have given you my number.

And you were right, I didn't go to King's Cross - I'm hoping to go with you!

Craigslist is just one way in which you can flirt online. There are, of course, countless other, more explicit ways - and I've already covered match.com's virtual winking feature - but we won't dwell on those sites that charge to do it. Because, frankly, it's pretty sad. I can say that because I've done it.

A more popular, kid-friendly way (though I wouldn't try it with kids) is Facebook's built-in poking device. With it, you can let your 'lover' know that they've been poked when they next log in.

Here's what I saw when I logged into Facebook tonight:

Pokes

You were poked by Meghan Vaughn.

poke back | remove poke

And when I clicked "poke back"?

Poke Meghan?

You are about to poke Meghan. She will be informed of this the next time she logs in.

Poke | Cancel

It's about as far removed from actual poking as you can get. If you've ever been poked by or even poked the person next to you on the Tube (and again, I'd advise against this), there is no option to "remove poke" nor is it wise to "poke back".

And now that Facebook's opened up to third-party applications there are even more ways to poke people. You can use Poke Pro! Super Poke! Party Poke! Pokey Poke! Edgar Allan Poke! The list is endless...

But despite all these options, the third-party application support, the AJAX controls, the JavaScript widgetry, even logging in to see that I've been poked in every conceivable way, I feel no closer to an actual physical connection than I did those years I spent being ignored by girls.

At least when one looked up it meant something. And if they ever poked back, I knew I was in.

Feeling awkward.

2007-06-24T22:04:00.000+01:00

For those of you who thought my blog would suddenly become more interesting (as if that's even possible) since moving to London, and perhaps less about mundane adventures, such as boarding a train, playing video games or watching TV, I write with a story that takes place outside of the house and, indeed, the banality of public transport.

That's right. In an attempt to find something more interesting to write about (and maybe - incidentally - have a good time) I went out on Friday night. To a bar.

(I won't even tell you how I got there.)

But I was early. Never one to be fashionably late (or even fashionable, for that matter), I got to Tiger Tiger in Haymarket a good half-hour or so before my friends arrived, giving me ample time to loiter awkwardly by the bar, even smash a glass and act like it wasn't me.

Still, the fracas drew some attention. And I was soon chatting to a South Korean girl who loitered with just as much awkwardness, if not more. Hers derived from the fact that her English was almost incomprehensible.

At first I couldn't tell if it was because the music was loud or if indeed because she was new to the language. In any case, I understood that she was looking for a boyfriend and, I suspect, a way to stay longer in this country.

Her attempts to do so were misguided to say the least.

"You have strange face," she said.
"Like...in a good way?"
"It's a strange," she insisted.

Just as she began to gesture with her hands and demonstrate just what it was about my face that was quite so strange my friends arrived.

I followed them, left the South Korean girl at the bar and headed to the dance floor, more awkward than ever.

Onward Christian soldiers...

2007-06-23T19:25:00.001+01:00

modern jesus army., originally uploaded by San Sharma.

Two groups with recruitment issues - the Christians and the Army - join forces to increase numbers.

A very random act of kindness.

2007-06-20T21:55:00.000+01:00

If, according to American band The Shins, 'Caring is Creepy', kindness is just plain weird. And increasingly rare, I'm beginning to find.

I was just waiting for a train when my bag split and spilled its contents all over the platform floor. Dashing to pick up the pieces before my train arrived, not a single soul offered to help.

Imagine my surprise when I got on the train and a soul (single, I'd hoped) offered up her seat so that I could use my Mac, fresh from the floor of platform 2, near an electrical outlet. (Perhaps she'd read of my recent 'power struggle' on this here blog.)

"Yes, that would be...great," I said, dumbfounded and a little flustered.

Also in my hands were a pair of pants and some moisturising cream. I'd picked them off the floor (they were mine, after all) and was quite aware that it was an odd grouping of objects.

She was too, I suspect. Because instead of moving across, so that we could both sit at the table, she slid past, grabbed her belongings on the way (a more conventional grouping - bag, coat, etc.), then appeared to vacate the train all together.

Whether she meant to exit at Birmingham, I'll never know. But I didn't go after her, I didn't even ask. I just let her go.

That, I suppose, was my act of kindness.

Rock, roll and RSI

2007-06-05T23:57:00.000+01:00

You know, it's funny - I've been working at my computer for almost two years and am suffering from repetitive strain injury only now, after spending just two days away from my computer.

The cause?

Guitar Hero for the Playstation 2.

If you've never played it before, I urge you - go out, get it, buy a Playstation if you need to (you can sell your real guitar for the cash), and say good bye to your social life.

It's the most fun you can have without leaving the house. I bet you'd love it.

I'd shake on that, but my hand is wrecked.

Guitar Hero II

"Day 47 in the Big Brother house."

2007-05-30T19:16:00.000+01:00

Big Brother is back on the telly tonight. And little brother, Ben - one of my four new housemates - will be, I imagine, quite pissed off that I'm taking that fact as inspiration for this post.

I'm contractually obliged, he said, to write about my new abode on my blog. And perhaps he's right. (I never did read the contract.) But I'm pretty sure he won't be happy that, despite all the good times we've shared, its the return of Channel 4's beleaguered reality TV show that has compelled me to write.

I've made up my mind. And I'm going to run with the analogy.

15 Kingsgate Road, my new house, is not unlike that of the compound at Elmstree Studios, where tonight a dozen fame-seekers will wheel in their suitcases and roll out their desperation.

Here, at Kingsgate Road, there are fewer fame-seekers but no less desperation. If this were reality TV - and it very nearly is, with all this digital equipment - Bill would be playing up to the camera, Adam, playing it down, Nic, the gobby posh one and Ben, a young boy on the verge of manhood.

Think Glyn from series 7.

And me? An agoraphobic, web-cam wielding recluse? I'm the perfect housemate.

Powering down.

2007-05-26T13:04:00.000+01:00

I am today simultaneously impressed and disappointed by modern technology.

I'm finally blogging from a coffee shop in Birmingham - here's me, looking a little worse for wear (and like I'm leaning on that guy's arse). But it took me some time to get here.

In what may have been an act of defiance, my phone switched itself off last night, when it's battery died and the whole thing powered down for the first time in ages.

It's like it was saying to me, "hey! Silent's not enough, buddy. I'm powering down."

This led to a series of panic attacks. What if someone needed to get in touch with me? What if someone died? Or, worse still, what if my other communication devices join forces with the phone, form some sort of union and go on strike!

Thinking that I ought to check the former before fearing the latter, I tried to give me mum a ring. But, lo and behold, her number was stored on my phone. My sister's too, and my best friend's.

Don't worry, I thought. I've got backup.

But, when you're standing on a train platform in England's second city, having your phonebook backed up online is really no use.

I needed to get inside and find some wi-fi. This shouldn't be too difficult, right? This is England's second city, after all.

Well, I don't know how they rank these things, but finding wi-fi was pretty difficult. And when I finally did, my MacBook dimmed and whirred, as if to say, "sorry boss, the phone was calling me a 'scab'," and powered down, it's battery dead. It had joined the strike, the aluminium encased bastard!

And so the last hour or so has been spent, scouting Birmingham for a power outlet. Starbucks didn't have one spare, neither did Costa, and security weren't best impressed when I stole power from a Coke machine in the Bullring (though the act itself was rather empowering).

So here I am now, having been thrown out of Europe's biggest shopping centre, sitting in the concourse between it and my train back to London. I'm powered-up and connected; I've Skyped my friends and family, they're all fine. But I'm terrified to check my iPod. If that powers down I've got a two and half hour journey in silence.

What will I do? Read?

Good timing.

2007-05-26T11:42:00.000+01:00

I couldn't have timed my return to Shrewsbury any better.

In a strange sort of reverse ethnic cleansing, the beautiful market town I once called home was this weekend left practically empty. Its townsfolk - arguably its least appealing quality - had hit the road to Wembley to support their local team, who in a weird twist of footballing fate were to play in the country's premiere stadium.

The streets were both eerily and delightfully quiet - football fans free to frolic in their fighting someplace else. All but one, I discovered, remained, here at Shrewsbury train station.

"You going to the match?" a lady shouted to another, who stood under the shadow of her hulking, skin head husband. She looked at him.
"Nah," she said.
"Why not?" the other asked. "I didn't think you guys would want to miss it."
"It's, er...him," she said, craning her neck to look up at her man, who had the word 'England' tattooed on the back of his. "He's got a football ban."
With that he bowed his head - partly in shame, I thought. Partly to reveal another tattoo. It was of a dog, burned to his scalp, now forever burned on my memory.

The man had a tattoo of a dog on his head.

Before I had much more time to think about that, my train arrived. I couldn't have timed my return to London any better, I thought. And with that left town.

Underwear still a big drawer

2007-05-25T22:50:00.000+01:00

Picturing a crowd in its underwear is the worst possible advice to give someone nervous about addressing a classroom full of school children. Still, it's the advice I received a couple of years ago, right before I spoke at the Priory School in Shrewsbury.

It's also the advice I chose to ignore this afternoon, when I returned to the same school and to the same children - all grown up, their voices and bra straps having broken under the full force of puberty. With their lip gloss and their lethargy they were almost unrecognisable. And surprising in their intellect.

I was there to teach them about business, but - as per the cliché - they ended up teaching me. One girl told me how she'd secured the rights to all the pin boards in the school and that if anybody wanted to hang a poster they'd have to pay her for the privilege.

"It's premium ad space," she said.
"It's a monopoly." said another.

The kids were 14!

At that age I didn't know what was or wasn't 'premium ad space', nor that 'monopoly' was anything other than a board game - and a boring one at that.

I guess I was too busy picturing people in their underwear to care. Not much has changed in that respect.

Great, white and blue

2007-05-23T17:22:00.000+01:00

It took me a little while to get into the band, The National. Might be because their name is one word short of The National Front. It's more likely because I didn't have their CD.

But I got Alligator yesterday and it's brilliant. In fact, I've been playing 'Mr November' for almost eight hours straight.

I think it saved my life.

Though lyrics like, "I'm the great white hope/I'm the new blue blood," do little to separate the Indie rockers from that other 'National' group, there's something about lead singer, Matt Berninger's baritone and the energy with which the band pop out the 4-minute wonder that gives me hope.

Even if I'll never be great or white. Or blue even.

The National – mr november

'Sorry' seems to be the hardest word.

2007-05-22T11:24:00.000+01:00

I don't know if that's true. I find 'proliferation' very hard to say. 'Sorry' is easy. I say it all time - too much even.

"Sorry, I thought you said it was fancy dress."
"I'm not your father, sorry."
"Sorry, no speaky English."

The last one's a bit of a cop out, to be honest. But it's something I've been doing a lot of recently. (Not 'copping off', mind you. Nothing's changed in that respect.)

But I haven't been posting much and I am sorry.

In a post entitled 'Cop Out', fellow blogger (and one time 'real life' friend) Wanderingjess perfectly captures my feelings of late.

I've just been beat lately, a little emotionally drained and a little too scattered to blog. (sigh)

And now I'm wondering, like Jess (but with an 'o' not an 'a'), do I bring you up to speed with the recent happenings not covered by this blog?

Or, like the first episode in the returning season of an American TV show (which is quite how I see my life), gently reintroduce the themes (social faux pas) and characters (me) that are recurrent in this blog?

This being the Internet - and me being quite lazy - I'm going to opt for the latter.

But please, browse the archives of this site, expect more regular updates and, inevitably, more social faux pas from here on.

Right, I'm off to a fancy dress party...

Roti and respectability

2007-04-12T21:44:00.001+01:00

I've just explained this to a friend and she thought it was hilarious. Hopefully you will too. Hopefully some good will come from my evening, before something bad comes from my mouth.

You see, I'm full. Like really full. I'm so full I can't see my feet.

And it's all because I've just been caught in a cycle of roti and respectability, of cauliflower and chapati.

My aunt, who is staying with us this week, has made alloo gobi - a curried combination of potato and cauliflower, which, she tells me, is disrespectful - for some reason - to eat alone. Not with a loved one, of course (this is the land of the arranged marriage, after all).
"You mustn't eat without chapati," she said.

But it's also quite bad, I understand, to eat chapati alone - without the curried combination of something else. So, imagine my difficulty tonight in trying to synchronise my chapati and my cauliflower.

Each time I finished one I was served more of the other.

And so it went until both were finished at exactly the same time. And most of my lower torso had completely vanished beneath my big belly.
"More cauliflower, Sandeep?"
"No thanks, Aunty ji."

Gay pride

2007-04-07T09:11:00.001+01:00

"Sunshine makes British people act crazy. Like...nice and everything."

Twitter update 06:03 PM April 05, 2007

It's a Bank Holiday weekend and spring has sprung its sunny self on us, like a hot, unexpected guest at a party. It's like we're so used to bad weather - and ugly people - that we don't know how to act.

White guys everywhere are wasting no time in impressing our new guest by whipping off their shirts and parading their pastiness with puffed-up pride.

Even I've been acting sort of strange. So overwhelmed was I with the morning sun that I sent a group text message, to around thirty people, announcing my good mood, the good weather and the apparent good news that I was, in no way, a homosexual.

"The sun - and the San - is out," it read. Quickly followed by a disclaimer - "Sorry, I'm not 'coming out.' Just wishing you all a good day."

"The lady doth protest too much," read one response. "You are gay," said another.

Well, if 'gay' is being happy and carefree maybe that's what I am. And proud too.

But heterosexual, I will add. And enjoying the sunshine.

In a bohemian sort of way.

2007-04-03T22:58:00.000+01:00

I know it's really wrong but I still like Pete Doherty.

The Namesake is super, man

2007-04-03T22:44:00.000+01:00

It's no secret that I saw Superman Returns six times last year (and that's not including DVD viewings). I own both Spider-man films, eagerly await the next, and have all but the Joel Schumacher Batman outings.

It's not that I particularly like men in tights, though some may suspect otherwise; or that I have a hero complex, any more than most men.

I suppose I identify with these stories that are, essentially, the stories of immigrants.

Sent from far away places, living with alter-egos, battling with the duality of identity - on the one hand plain and inconspicuous, on the other colourful and foreign - superheroes (powers aside) are your regular, run of the mill, second generation immigrants.

Meera Syal went as far as claiming that Superman himself was Indian in her comedy sketch show, Goodness Gracious Me. NHS glasses, kipper tie..? Where else, she asked, could a man run faster than a train?

It's another Mira (though spelt slightly differently - Mira Nair) that reminds us of this fact. And it's on a train that her new film, The Namesake, begins. It ends the same way and in-between fills its two and a bit hours with, what critic Mark Kermode calls, "issuetastic family drama."

This, from the film's synopsis:

When the the Ganguli family moves from Calcutta to New York, they embark upon a lifelong balancing act to meld into a new world without forgetting the old. Though parents Ashoke and Ashima long for the family and culture that enveloped them in India, they take great pride in the opportunities their sacrifices have afforded their children. Paradoxically, their son Gogol is torn between finding his own unique identity without losing his heritage. Even Gogol's name represents the family's journey into the unknown.

Though I might rather relate to the Super side of Superman, his alter-ego, and that of the unfortunately named Gogol Ganguli, strike a more notable resemblance.

In The Namesake, Gogol's experiences were very much like mine. I cringed watching him bring home a white girl to meet his parents, flinched as she put her hand on his during dinner and squirmed as she planted an awkward kiss on his father's cheek. We just don't do that, my mum says.

I wondered what it must have been like for her, being born in India, coming over to England as a child and raising children of her own - 'neither here nor there'.

I wondered how she must have felt when I, like Gogol, disappeared into the surrogate family of my girlfriend, my work and my country.

Like all second-generation immigrants, I suppose, Superman himself is torn between two cultures - taught to respect his Kryptonian heritage, whilst embracing his undeniable Americanism.

The actor who plays Gogol Ganguli (Kal Pen) was, incidentally, in Superman Returns. It was a non-speaking role... You notice these things when you watch a film several times!

The Namesake was brilliant. I urge you to see it at least once.

The Namesake [Fox Searchlight]

Window shopping

2007-04-01T00:21:00.000+01:00

I've always felt a sort of, I suppose, misguided affinity with the Irish. My dad told me when I was younger of the signs that would hang in shop windows - "no blacks, no dogs, no Irish." And I just imagined that the three would hang outside, on high streets, and peer into the windows of a country that hated them.

Of course, this was never really the case. Being hated is no foundation for a friendship. And the dogs didn't really give a shit.

Nevertheless, when I detected an Irish accent at the hairdressers' this morning I was pleasantly surprised to discover that it belonged to my new stylist. There aren't many Irish people in Shropshire. In fact, I know one other, and I think she puts it on anyway.

But this was the real thing. And, as we chatted, I thought to myself - if only there were a dog and a country that hated us the picture would be complete. I was quickly glad that there were neither.

Like a tree.

2007-03-17T09:11:00.000Z

There was a television advert for a bank or an insurance company - I don't remember which exactly - but I'm pretty sure it was for an organisation for whom the level of emotion was completely inappropriate.

It featured a montage of faces, each dreamily looking upwards, sharing the wishes that were somehow facilitated by said organisation.

"I want to be a gymnast,"
"I want to be teacher,"
"I want to be a sex pest," and so on.
And, the closing thought, "I want to be a tree."

The latter was my mum's favourite. She likes trees - she couldn't quite see how banking or taking out insurance would allow her to become one. But the thought became something of a catch phrase for her. "I want to be a tree," she often said, dreamily looking upwards, fantasising of a life more peaceful and serene.

Well, that dream has slowly been hacked away at for several years. And last night it came crashing to the ground, when my dad committed axe to trunk and bought the whole fucking tree down.

Concerned that it was growing out of control, dad was determined to assert his, and fell the tree that loomed over a main road in our front garden.

Obviously, there are precautions that need to be taken when dealing with a felling so close to a busy road. For my dad these precautions, and the costs involved in taking them, were to be - at all times - avoided.

The tree, he decided, would be felled by himself, his shopkeeper friend, a chainsaw, and a bit of rope. And in the hope that the twenty-foot beech tree would fall this way and not that - onto the road and to the injury or death of its innocent users.

But, while still shedding the tree of its branches, onlookers must have observed this potential tragedy and complained; for when the police arrived the men dropped their chainsaws and their plans.

But not for good.

Determined to fell this tree, without any financial cost to himself, and undeterred by the warnings of the police (and soon after the local council and two tree surgeons), my dad decided that he would return to the tree, under the cloak of darkness. And, if his shopkeeper friend wouldn't join him, he'd get his best man on the job.

81-year-old war veteran, John would trade his walking stick for a chainsaw and fell the tree in exchange for fire wood, such was his quality of life. He lived alone, in the bad end of town, and would use the wood to heat his abode through to the summer, if he'd make it.

To my dad being compassionate and frugal were two mutually exclusive things. You couldn't be one and the other. Saving money, he thought, was a cruel thing. And so he watched as the old man boarded a step ladder and began to saw at the wood.

But before they were done, the local council returned. The tree, they suggested, may not be ours after all. My dad may be fined, the old man deprived of his fire wood and my mum, whose dreams had been dashed, sawed and partially felled, proven right, after all.

Being cheap and wise, she'd always insisted, were mutually exclusive. In trying to save money my dad had incurred additional costs. And had he learned his lesson?

"I think I'll get John to make a start on the tree in the back garden," he said over dinner the following night.
"Why don't you just do it the right way," my mum said. "For once."
With that she got down from the table and stood her ground, strong and firm. And not at all unlike a tree.

Coloured people.

2007-03-11T20:46:00.000Z

You wanna live like coloured people?

People. Pets. Places.

2007-03-11T08:47:00.000Z

We grieve over people and pets but also over places. And while they never die, as such, our relationships with them can change, remain desperately the same or end altogether. In that sense, the towns and cities in which we spend our childhoods, teens and adult lives, are like the relationships we have with people and, to some extent, with pets. They do, after all, get run over by cars; they are loved and are lost.

The places where I've lived, I suppose, are like the girls I've loved. I've played kiss chase in the town of my infancy, got hot and heavy in the suburbs of my teens, and played the field in the the travels of my twenties.

Now that I'm moving to London - the big smoke - I wonder where the analogy will take me. A fat girl with a cigar? I certainly hope not. But, in the meantime, I'm revisiting an old love, having moved out of my flat and in with my parents.

If the travels of my twenties were like playing the field, moving back with my parents is like being castrated. Long gone is the freedom and the flirtatiousness of my young adult life. It's back to curfews and cooked dinners.

But I can't complain. The food is really very nice and there's no where to go out anyway. It's given me time to think. And yesterday I took our dog for a walk down memory lane. Well, actually Mill Farm Drive, the street where my parents live.

I found that either the houses have shrunk or I've grown. I'd walked the streets as a teenager but, for the first time, could see over its fences, and into the gardens and trampolines of its backyards. I saw not the past but what could be my future.

Young families, new money, old people - in relationships with their places more stable, more kind.

I wondered, when the fat lady in London sings, and my twenties become my thirties and those my forties (as the sequence goes) if I would find myself, on a street like this with a life more ordinary.

Marriages, mortgages, divorces, down payments.... Our relationships with people and places are complicated things! I'll stick to having pets, I thought.

That was until I had to use the poop-a-scoop in my hand. If there's one thing that's true about all relationships: shit happens. You love, you lose and, occasionally, you pick up the shit and move on.

The writing's on the wall.

2007-03-07T07:18:00.000Z

Removing Dawson's Creek from my list of favourite TV shows on social networking site, Facebook, had the exact opposite effect yesterday, when its 'news feed' announced the move to my entire network of friends.

"'San Sharma removed Dawson's Creek from his favourite TV shows'?" Bill wrote on my wall. "...you big gay."

Facebook

Gutterball

2007-03-06T22:57:00.000Z

To quote Larry David, "I like bowling." But I can relate, almost too readily, to his many, many complaints:

"You can't find a ball, that's the problem. I don't know, maybe you own a bowling ball; I don't own a bowling ball. My whole life, every time I'm at a bowling alley, sticking my fingers in all these holes, picking up balls...

You gotta get your own ball. I don't bowl enough, I think, to get my own ball; it takes up a lot of space in the house. You'll end up looking at it in the closet going, "What am I doing with a bowling ball? I don't even bowl!"...You know what I mean?

...Say you want to get rid of the ball. How do you get rid of a bowling ball? Think about that. Who do you give a bowling ball to? Nobody bowls. Their fingers -- it only fits your fingers. You throw a bowling ball in the garbage can, you know what that sanitation man's gonna do? He's gonna knock on your door; that's how upset he's going to be. He's gonna say, "Who the f*** threw a bowling ball in the garbage can?"

Curb Your Enthusiasm
Season 4, Episode 31 ("Mel's Offer")

Lately, I've been sticking my fingers in a lot of holes. Not enough, mind you, to buy my own ball, but just enough to become friendly with the alley staff. You might think that Ed was the manager. He certainly rolls around the place like he is. You may even mistake him as being a bowling ball. He is, after all, big and round, and with just as many holes.

Tonight however, if only momentarily, I reserved my judgement, kept my fingers to myself and decided that Ed, while cocky and mildly irritating, was actually a nice guy.
"Listen, when you're, er, finished let me know," he said, as I slipped and laced my way into something less comfortable. "I'll, er, see if I can try and sort you out with another game." With that he winked.
Brilliant, I thought - free game. What a nice guy?

So, when we were finished I headed over to the reception to let him know.
"So Ed," I said, slyly slipping over to his counter. "We're, er, finished...I wondered if you could, er, sort us out with another game?"
"Ah, I see..." He smiled and pointlessly looked over his shoulder, at a wall. "I can't see why that would be a problem."
"Brilliant. Ed, you're the man, you know that?"
Apparently he did, because he didn't acknowledge the question. He just furrowed his brow and banged away at his keyboard. "You're on lane six, right?"
"Yeah."
"Right," he hit the enter key as if he'd just written a novel and was punctuating its final sentence by giving his keyboard a good whack. "Okay...that's going to be £10.50."
My face burned red, or that sort of maroon colour Indian people go when embarrassed. I couldn't believe that I'd misjudged his intentions.
What was the wink? I thought. And why would he try and sort us out with another game? Isn't that his job? Isn't that what he does all day? What's there to 'sort out'? Payment?

In any case, I was standing there, going maroon; so presumptuous as to not even bring my wallet with me, and very aware that I hadn't responded to Ed for the duration of my thought process.
"Yeah, of course," I managed. "I'll, er, go and get my wallet." And with that rolled slowly, back to my lane, to fetch my wallet and my self-respect, and to lose at a game I didn't really want to play.

Cosplay

2007-02-25T09:55:00.000Z

The gospel according to The Hold Steady

2007-02-24T10:03:00.000Z

Craig Finn took to the stage last night like the speaker at a school assembly. The crowd was small and well behaved, many smartly-dressed, few actually paying attention.

Chubby, bearded and sweating profusely, Finn's appearance reminded me of an old school teacher, whose assemblies were almost always about global tragedies and usually infused with a typical mix of guilt and religion that, on one occasion, made one boy vomit and all of us - always - feel terrible.

When Craig Finn sang however it was clear he bore the mantle of preacher, not teacher. His stories were of local tragedy, of New York City and Minneapolis, of heartbreak and drinking. They made us feel good. And while one or two of us may have been sick, we were drunk with more love than religion could muster.

In 2000, guitarist Tad Kubler, drummer Judd Counsell and bassist Galen Polivka joined Finn and started a rock and roll band. But last night, on stage, they were his disciples. And four hundred or so people in Birmingham heard the gospel according to The Hold Steady.

Playing mostly from their third album, Boys and Girls in America, Finn smiled and sang and swung his arms, grabbed us by our collars, and whispered in our ears, the secrets of his friends, the stories of his youth.

And when he was done - sweating more so, drunk and tearful - he thanked us, he thanked the band, he said we were one and the same. "You are The Hold Steady," he said. And never before have I felt a deep sense of belonging to a room full of strangers. He walked into the crowd and to open arms and embraces, still singing, "I've had kisses that make Judas seem sincere."

And, just as soon as we planted one on his cheek, he turned the other and it was all over - ears ringing, amps buzzing and lights up on a room full of friends.

The Hold Steady

Le Moonwalker

2007-02-23T07:00:00.000Z

Ooh la la! Check out my photos from Paris on the link below.

Paris is for Lovers [via my Flickr photo stream]

Agnostic for chemistry

2007-02-21T08:49:00.000Z

"I've decided I'm agnostic," Pete said. "Not atheist."
"What's the difference?"
"It means that the only thing I can be sure of is that there may or may not be a God. But that I can't prove it, so won't worry about it."
"That's exactly how I feel about chemistry."

"1 adult, 1 child, please."

2007-02-21T08:38:00.000Z

There is something of an image problem with the new Kate Winslet's film, I realised last night, when the attractive, box-office clerk asked me what I'd like to watch.
"Little Children," I replied.

Little Children (2006) [via IMDb]

My poor, unsuspecting Valentine.

2007-02-20T00:09:00.000Z

I convinced myself that this year's lack of Valentine's Day cards was due to my recent change of address. Not that in previous years I've had much trouble wading through the post.

I'm usually the one sending them out - channelling the creative powers of an entire cottage industry, crafting a card with a year's worth of consideration, and carelessly spending a crazy amount of money on a gift as romantic as it is wrong.

An ex-girlfriend suffered the brunt of my love some years ago, when one such romantic gesture marked the beginning of the end for our relationship.

Not content buying roses, chocolates or - rather surprisingly - slutty underwear, I got wood. And not in the way you might expect on Valentine's Day. I actually bought two trees in "Lover's Wood", Scotland - planted to "symbolise our love", not intended to scare the crap out of my Valentine. Needless to say, it was the last we spent together.

And so this year I thought I would spare womankind my kindness - less through choice, I suppose, than circumstance - and enjoy a vomit-less Valentine's without the crafts, the cards, the crazy gifts.

There could be no less romantic excursion on Valentine's weekend, I thought, than a city break with my mum and my sister. Unless of course the city is Paris.

And that's where I found myself last weekend. In the exquisite opera district, and a hotel room that sleeps three, where the question, "voulez vous couchez avec moi?" decides who gets the single bed and who shares the double.

It was the Valentine's I'd wished for - unromantic, though no less wrong; spent with two women, albeit members of my immediate family; and cheaper - I don't doubt - than two trees in Lover's Wood or whatever gratuitous gift I would have given my poor, unsuspecting Valentine.

Movin' Out.

2007-02-03T22:52:00.000Z

I'm leaving this place in the morning.

My videos

And this is what happens when you read the Daily Mail.

2007-01-27T09:11:00.000Z

In the wake of the Big Brother racism row, distressed viewers are returning to a sense of normality and to discussing topics more typical of a reality TV show.

For the past week however the most distressed of viewers have been on the receiving end of the following arguments, surprised by the opinions of colleagues and co-workers, alarmed by their naiveté.

I do hope that these do not represent the views of most British people, but these are some of the arguments I actually heard last week.

"I'm sick of white people being sidelined."
Yeah, I suppose Black History Month is a bit much, isn't it? Really cuts into White History Year.
"It's political correctness gone mad."
I'm sorry, do you long for the time when we could tell one another to "f*** off back home"?
"Oh, but it's okay for Jermaine to call Jackie 'white trash'?"
No, Jermaine is not granted some sort of immunity from being racist on account of his being black. What he actually said was, "...they brought up the word 'white trash', and I don't want to bring that up. I wouldn't call her that, because she's a human being..."
"But Jade can't be racist. She's mixed race."
There's nothing in Jade's genetic make-up that excludes her from being racist. After all, I'm 100% me, and I hate myself a little bit.
"I'm sick of people playing the race card."
FYI: we don't like to, us darkies. If we gave you one you'd realise it's not that good a thing to have.

Death of a celebrity

2007-01-18T22:39:00.000Z

In the eastern Indian city of Patna protesters are burning an effigy that is said to resemble the organisers of Channel 4's reality TV show, Celebrity Big Brother. It looks very much to me like a standard, two plank wooden frame, cloaked in a burning white salwar kameez. Now, I've met John de Mol, co-founder of Endemol, the production company behind the Big Brother franchise, and he is definitely a jeans/sports jacket kind of guy.

Some four thousand miles west and Patna's favourite Bollywood actress, Shilpa Shetty, sits under the surveillance of de Mol's creation - the Big Brother house - caught by the lens of 36 surveillance cameras and the attention of the world's media.

Shetty, 31, is the unwitting subject of a racism row. Her treatment by fellow housemates has generated a record 30,000 viewer complaints and has sparked a national debate on bullying, class and race.

Whether you think her tormentors are racist or not, Shetty has been on the receiving end of some sort of sinister bigotry. And its origins, whether in cultural ignorance, jealousy or arrogance, is a story that needs to be talked about: it is the story of racism in this country.

The name calling, the back stabbing, the bitching, is not unusual in a television show of this nature. But it has become a vehicle for an issue that is as uncomfortable to discuss as the show is to watch.

Does Big Brother reflect society? And if so, are we a racist nation?

Shetty's biggest opponent in the Big Brother house is former contestant Jade Goody, who left series three in 2002, nominated by the public, denounced by the British tabloid press and met with a crowd of booing protesters. Since, she has returned to television, relauched her career and amassed a not inconsiderable fortune.

It's interesting, as a subplot to this series of Big Brother, that we may be witnessing a turning of the tide against the post-Heat notion of celebrity; that we are fed up with what is being celebrated; that it is no longer intelligence, artistry and achievement.

It is predicted that Jade will be the next contestant to leave the Big Brother house. When she does I suspect she will be met with another booing crowd, and that we may see another burning effigy.

Apple: "We need to talk."

2007-01-09T20:52:00.000Z

Probably the best thing I've ever seen.

Apple iPhone

This Life +10: Snap, crackle, flop.

2007-01-03T21:29:00.000Z

I skipped out of the Maidstone Community Centre New Year's Eve party before midnight this year (God knows why) and missed out on all the fireworks. Luckily for me, and viewers of 'This Life +10', there were a few bags of explosives on last night's telly. And a reminder that, amongst 'Celebrity This' and 'Reality That', there is still some British TV worth staying in for, even if it's a one-off Christmas special - and I use the word 'special' quite liberally.

'This Life +10' caught up with Miles, Anna, Milly, Egg and Warren of the original BBC drama, which ended in 1997 with a bang (actually, more of a wallop) after 32 episodes and a lot of shagging, swearing and snorting. Last night's reunion however ended on a much quieter note. There were fireworks, sure, but they were lit carefully, as if according to health and safety procedures: proof that people - like old fireworks - get duller with age.

Egg is somehow a literary sensation; Milly a mum; Warren is into life coaching; and Miles is a mega-rich hotels entrepreneur, hosting the former lawyers at his huge country pile. Anna still practices, and is the only character not completely mutated by time. She's still got attitude, balls (not literally) and those great legs. She didn't however have the best line. That honour went to Warren ( "Well really, I mean, arguing about the war...is so last season"). What she did have was a baby complex and exactly what was wrong with 'This Life +10'.

The original series was the twenties we had or wished we'd had (I'm still wondering if mine will come, as I struggle to stay awake at 9:30pm). They shagged, they swore, they swayed to...Suede. They were of their time. And now, while they don't swear any less, they discuss babies and bankruptcy and what exactly a "Kaiser Chief" is. And I wonder if it might have been best if they'd just stayed away and, like Suede and...shagging (I remember that), remained warm in the memory.

'This Life +10' arrived on our screens between two bastions of reality TV: 'I'm a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here' and 'Celebrity Big Brother', where fireworks mark the entrance and exit of its c-list contestants. Last night however, 'This Life +10' snapped, it crackled, but it flopped. I only hope that this so-called special, like the lingering smoke of a disappointing backyard firework display, doesn't cloud the memory of a groundbreaking show.

Happy New Year and that.

2007-01-01T23:27:00.000Z

I figured I'd be excused for my lack of Christmas spirit this year on account of my Hinduism, which - as you know - seems to come and go. In any case, I apologise for a quiet couple of weeks. And, while I'm late in wishing you a Merry Christmas, Hinduism is really no excuse (even if the calendar itself is Judo-centric) - and so I wish you all a very Happy New Year and all the best for 2007.

Peace out, James Brown.

2006-12-30T22:19:00.000Z

The King of Pop bids farewell to the Godfather of Soul.

Inches and centimetres

2006-12-20T08:12:00.000Z

Having debunked the rumour that I recently died, I have another, of even bigger concern to deny - "bigger" being the operative word, and more concerning than death, you might ask? If you're a guy, you'll understand.

A survey of more than 1,000 men in India has concluded that condoms made according to international sizes are too large for a majority of Indian men.

This, from a BBC News article, Condoms 'too big' for Indian men, has been the bone - sorry, the bane of my existence for the past two weeks. And the subject of many e-mails, mostly from white guys, liberally copying in their address books, and pasting the article below some small joke about size (though you don't see me complaining about length).

The article spread even to my mother, who is so news illiterate she still thinks Princess Diana was murdered.
"There are people talking in the office, San," she said over the phone. "They say your penis is small."
"What?!"
It was a conversation I didn't want to have with my mum. Again.

In my defence, and that of Indian guys everywhere, who, like me, have been forwarded this article, mocked by their friends and mothers and injured themselves on retracting tape measure, I say this:

It is not the size of the boat, people, it's the motion of the ocean. And, let's not forget, that over Indian seas (incidentally the third largest body of water in the world) is birthplace of the Kama Sutra and a billion children.

"From our population, the evidence is Indians are doing pretty well," says Sunil Mehra, the former editor of the Indian version of men's magazine Maxin. "With apologies to the poet Alexander Pope, you could say, for inches and centimetres, let fools contend."

Condoms 'too big' for Indian men via [BBC News]

Not dead.

2006-12-20T07:26:00.000Z

If this blog is my life "approximately", then I died about two weeks ago. And only three of you were concerned (only one left a comment - thank you, Nyssa). What's with that?

Well, when I ended the last post with a health scare and the words, 'The End', I had intended on writing sooner to explain. But the truth is, my life - not death - needed some serious examination. And I've spent the last week or so doing just that - getting it back on track; evaluating my work, my relationships, and my health.

Of course, none are really the better for it, but at least I have a clearer perspective on things. Even if my absense, these days, is harder to maintain.

In web 2.0, it's hard to play dead.

You can blog your own death, sure. But keeping a low profile on the Internet is a much harder thing. Visiting MySpace, for example, the online equivalent of popping into a Starbucks (albeit one full of emo kids pouting at camera phones), lets other members know when you last logged in.

And if you're slow on your old keyboard shortcuts, your instant messenger of choice might automatically sign you in as 'online', or as I like to set it, 'out for lunch' (which is the most likely).

These signs, and the recent changes to my web site, I imagine, put the most observant of my readers at ease. For the other three, rest assured, I am not dead.

Pain in my heart

2006-12-08T04:03:00.000Z

A little pain in my heart
Just won't let me be
Wake up restless nights
Lord and I can't even sleep.

Mmm, mmm yeah
Stop this little pain in my heart

Pain in my heart, Otis Redding
(covering the Rolling Stones)

It's a little less romantic than I remember, sitting in bed, listening to Otis Redding tonight. But that's because I do have a pain in my heart but it is less the pang of love than it is the sharp shooting sensation in the right side of my chest.

It woke me up about 3 am this morning. I couldn't get back to sleep and so rang NHS Direct, our health service's 24 hour hot line, which, I'm told, is not the number to chat to naughty nurses. I described my symptoms with the help of our soul singing friend.

"Mmm, mmm yeah," I said. "Stop this little pain in my heart."

Unfortunately, the nurse could not. Nor could she appreciate the song, or the inappropriate jokes I made about her naughtiness. Perhaps the pain is comeuppance for mine.

I have fallen spectacularly off my detox tonight, and indulged in more than a little gluehwein at a German Christmas market. But hey, it's Christmas. And it's German. And since I don't eat bratwurst I had little choice but the hot, spicy goodness of mulled wine. And now I'm left with the sharp, shooting pain of what might be a heart attack.

And so I leave you readers, perhaps for the last time, in the hope that a problem shared is indeed a problem halved (or, in the case of my readership divided by about 20); and that you might help me stop this little pain in my heart, before it stops me.

THE END.

They don't call it '24 Hour Fitness' for nothing.

2006-11-27T21:34:00.000Z

There's no better blog fodder than my infrequent trips to the gym. Unless, of course, you include my infrequent relationships with lesbians. Or maybe my penchant for social faux pas. (Wow, I really do a lot of stupid stuff...)

So, I thought I'd share with you something that I did this morning. I went to the gym. It was something I'd not done for some time. In fact, in the month that I'd not been I'd thought to cancel my membership but - and this is the way my mind works - I figured it was a tiny bit less of an effort to actually go to the gym than it was to cancel my membership.

I'd felt terrible about not going for a month, likening the waste to throwing £35 onto the ground. (In the run-up to Christmas even that's going to have to stop.) So, having decided to once again utilise my membership, I was buoyed by a sense of self-righteousness and the relief of not having to admit defeat to Kevin, my idiot instructor.

And so, when I got to the gym early this morning and the door was locked, I convinced myself that I was such an enthusiastic athlete that I was first to arrive. I waited no longer than a few seconds before Kevin came to let me in.

"Oh, how eager am I?!" I said, cocky and from under an oversized wooly hat. (I'd imagined I was Rocky Balboa when I got dressed that morning, but had neither the physique or the appropriate gym gear to pull it off convincingly.)
"Hold on," he said, opening the door. "I just popped out for a minute. Come on in."
As I did, and signed the book, I saw that above my name were others more eager than me. 2 am, 4 am, 5 am, read the 'time-in' column.
"What'd you say, mate?" asked Kevin, from behind the counter.
"Yeah...nothing," I said, pulling off my hat. "Just slept in a bit this morning, that's all."

Has anyone ever told you you look like Ashley Olson?

2006-11-24T18:26:00.000Z

I tell you what, it's a bloody good job that I'm very secure in my sexuality...

I came across MyHeritage.com via a MySpace profile that had posted a "Celebrity Collage".

As part of its development on face recognition in genealogy (and part gimmick, clearly), MyHeritage.com reads your photo, detects your face and, by way of dubious algorithm, associates it with the celebrities you resemble the most.

I thought I'd have a go.

MyHeritage

Biscuits keep falling on my head

2006-11-17T19:27:00.000Z

Lovely though she is, I must apologise on behalf of Myleene Klass, for her soapy breasts and their unlikely appearance on my blog last week. I realise the post was somewhat out of character and I do hope it didn't offend my more conservative readers.

The truth is, I've not been feeling myself recently. Quite literally. I'm undertaking a month long detox, in which I'm abstaining from booze, fags and sex. Some are easier to give up than others. I don't smoke really and it's actually more of an effort to attract girls than to...repel them.

Jesus will tell you however (when he's next in) that temptation is the hardest part. Indeed, my four days in detox has felt like a biblical 40. Short of the devil himself making an appearance I have been plagued with the wicked snares of desire.

The inescapably attractive Myleene Klass is one, appearing bikini-clad and buxom on ITV's I'm a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here. A burgeoning social life is another. This weekend alone will see me at a club, a house party and a wedding reception, with orange juice and clarity at each.

As if that weren't enough, junk food - perhaps the hardest thing for me to give up - has practically been falling from the sky. Sorry, has actually been falling from the sky, I kid you not. Yesterday, and not for the first time, I was pummelled by chocolate biscuits as I walked down Princess Street. What's that about? Go down there yourself and you'll see crumbs where I was.

Luckily, I've not reached the stage where the smashed remains of chocolate biscuits have tempted me from my detox. Should the bikini-clad and buxom fall into my lap I might be swayed.

2006-11-15T08:21:00.000Z

	Sorry girls... I'm breaking my 'no ITV' rule, skipping Celebrity Scissorhands (deciding instead to make a large donation to Children In Need) and watching I'm a Celebrity... Here's why.
So long 'Celebrity Scissorhands!'

Why I'm watching 'I'm a Celebrity'...	Ladies and gentlemen, Myleene Klass.

Washed Up

2006-11-13T23:53:00.000Z

When I moved out of my family home into my own place one of first things I bought was a plastic washing up bowl. It's more symbolic than it sounds.

To me, it, and all the new kitchenware I'd bought, represented a new independence and a break from the Indian culture on which I was raised.

I'd never seen a washing up bowl until I went to my girlfriend's house. English people, I discovered, put their dishes in this bowl, soaked them in hot water and, some time later, rinsed them off. It seemed to be the antithesis of the Sisypheon ordeal that was washing up in my house.

My long suffering Mum stood making hot chapatis while we ate, and somehow managed to finish hers first and be at the kitchen sink quicker than we could say alloo sag. (My pronunciation always slowed me down somewhat.)

There would be no after dinner conversation. The trays had to be washed - jaldi, jaldi - before the colourful culinary delights left stains in their steel compartments. Mum would stand, hunched over the sink, scrubbing the trays as they clanked, one by one, before her.

The plastic bowl, I observed, allowed my girlfriend's family to dispose of waste liquid into the sink, whilst keeping the washing up water relatively clean.

It was perfect, I thought. While the dishes soaked I could...listen to Radio 4, read the newspaper, have a glass of wine - do all the things we never did in our house. I could...be white and middle-class. All thanks to a plastic washing up bowl.

It wasn't long, however, after moving into my own place that I began to find the plastic bowl a bit cumbersome. I couldn't get much in it and I didn't get much out of it. It just became another thing to wash up. And while I let things soak I realised that I didn't care much for Radio 4, I never bought the paper and I didn't know how to drink wine without getting drunk.

I took it out of the sink. And my washing up bowl, for some time, became my fruit bowl.

Some say multiculturalism is a melting pot. I think it's more a plastic washing up bowl. And I've decided - and can only imagine its cultural ramifications - that I'm getting a dishwasher.

Borat. And mixing with the wrong crowd.

2006-11-12T09:12:00.000Z

I went to see Borat for the second time yesterday. But I don't imagine it'll become the multiple viewing experience Superman Returns was. In fact, the first time I went to see it I didn't see it at all. I made the mistake of going on an Orange Wednesday, when mobile phone customers get two-for-one cinema tickets, saw the enormous queue of Borat fans, turned around and walked home.

I was put off, not exactly by the size of the crowd, but by its components. And that sounds like a terribly snobby thing to say. But, to quote the Onion, stereotypes are a real time saver, and just a glance at the crowd revealed a group of people probably unable to separate the irony from the racism, misogyny and anti-semitism of Borat.

The genius of Sacha Baron Cohen's creation is that it makes its point by seemingly embracing these bigoted ideas, turning the mirror on its subjects and making us question the boundaries of humour. When I finally saw the film yesterday I found that my stereotyping was spot on, that the crowd, which I'd tried to avoid by going to the matinee, asked no questions of its humour, instead erupted into hysterical laughter without the slightest delay.

I was, and not for the first time in Shrewsbury, immersed in a crowd with whom I shared little in common. And it made me feel as uneasy as Borat's tasteless gags. If you don't see these as satire, I thought, you are essentially laughing at racism, misogyny and anti-semitism. Were these people, I thought, looking at the crowd, the ones accusing me of terrorism? Calling me "über-gay"?

Is it good satire? It is occasionally. I liked when he lambasted people who deserved to be lambasted (and not just because I like to use the word 'lambast'). The frat boys in the Winnebago were truly horrible racist, sexist bastards. The scene in which Borat fearlessly strides into a Texan rodeo ring and loudly praises his hosts' "War of Terror" to wild applause is brilliantly surreal. But picking on shopkeepers by smashing their cheap antiques or presenting Atlanta folk with a bag of his after-dinner poo is just bullying one step up from Jeremy Beadle.

Is Borat funny? Yes, it is, and fine TV. And perhaps that's how it could have been better enjoyed, on the small screen and with like minded people, with whom I could have been sure to share the joke. But yesterday, I think, I was sitting in the wrong crowd.

Stereotypes Are A Real Timesaver, The Onion

Greatest Hits

2006-11-10T08:15:00.000Z

I spent a big portion of last night, horizontal on my sofa, going through my entire blog, assigning labels to every post in its three year history. It was a Sisyphean task. But an enlightening one, in that it allowed me to see the frequency with which I write about certain subjects.

By this study you could say that this is something of a travel blog. There are 43 posts in this category, but that's not necessarily because I travel a lot. It's just that I post a lot when I travel.

I also write quite frequently about dating. It's quite alarming how many posts are labelled both 'sex' and 'faux pas'. That should give you some indication of my prowess. (Still single, ladies. Form an orderly queue.)

So, the next time you're horizontal on your sofa browse my blog by label and you might find, if I may say so myself, some absolute corkers. Like these:

From Travel:

From Dating:

From Music:

My type.

2006-11-03T08:08:00.000Z

I don't exactly have "a type". I find the whole notion a bit non-sensical. Beyond the obvious physical attributes (attractive, please) surely we all want to meet someone who is funny, interesting and smart, etc. (I doubt there is much demand for the sombre, dull and dumb.) Besides I've learnt, in this town, not to be so picky.

There is one attribute however that I assume most people demand in their prospective partners. And that is a compatible sexual orientation. It's an important quality sure, but one that, for some reason, I seem to have difficulty finding.

I didn't find it last weekend. And I'm beginning to wonder if my type is, in fact, lesbian. Or whether I am so metrosexual - so far from the alpha male - that I am considered attractive by the lesbian community. Or even, ironically, so often perceived as gay that my own gaydar is somewhat faulty. In any case, and to quote Larry David, I am a "friend o' lesbians".

It started in 1997 with my first girlfriend, who - you could say - played the butch to my femme. She whipped me in sports (though that's no great feat), she wore her hair shorter than mine and spent an inordinate amount of time with her best friend. She is now, incidentally, a pro-golfer. And full-time lesbian.

More recently I dated a lesbian that I found on match.com. Her profile read, "22-year-old woman...seeking women 18-35." Remarkably, she said, I was just her type. Needless to say, it didn't work out. I guess something got between us.

And then, of course, last weekend. And Sarah. And although I'm off the dating scene at the moment I was happy to meet the delightful Scotswoman and publisher of My Little Pony magazine. And, while I doubt her job has anything to do with her sexuality (unless My Little Pony is some sort of horrible euphemism), I was quite surprised when she asked me out and even more surprised when I heard the next day that she was gay.

With the news I began to piece together the evening. And it's a wonder I didn't work it out for myself. She did have rather boyish hair, she dressed not unlike KD Lang and, of course, she was into me. There was a point in the evening when we were dancing and she grabbed me by the hand and sort of twirled me around. "I'm sorry," she said with a laugh. "I'm used to being the lead." I didn't think much of it at the time. But now it makes complete sense.

Dumped.com

David Blaine: Street Magic (sort of)

2006-10-27T22:47:00.000+01:00

WARNING: Okay kids, this one's got some bad language.
But it's f****** funny.

Classic (actual) David Blaine trick

What's wrong with Ricky Gervais's Extras?

2006-10-26T22:02:00.000+01:00

I suspected something was wrong with Ricky Gervais when he, and writing partner Stephen Merchant, ended The Office with a two-part Christmas special, in which its star-crossed lovers became uncrossed, so to speak, and all lived happily ever after.

It was lovely, don't get me wrong. But at that moment, when Dawn and Tim kissed, a whole country was watching. And it applauded. Long gone were the days when you and your few like-minded friends would cringe at David Brent, the world's most annoying boss. Now annoying bosses all over the country were watching. And they'd bought the DVD.

Then came along Extras and an admirable effort to shed the catch-phrase loving contingent of Gervais's mainstream audience. Viewing figures dropped and, for the first season at least, Gervais and Merchant remembered how to make a cult TV show.

They just forgot to make it funny.

Okay, that's not fair. It has its moments. But, as the second series finished last week, I wondered, what's wrong with Extras?

I came up with this:

Andy Millman is the least funny character
Ricky Gervais is Andy Millman, struggling bit-part actor who gave up his day job in the hope of achieving fame and fortune. Actually, Ricky Gervais is Ricky Gervais, which is not to say unfunny, but it's unimaginative. There's very little creation in the character. Ashley Jenson (Maggie); Stephen Merchant, who plays Darren, Andy's incompetent agent; and Barry "off Eastenders" have less screen time but much more realised characters, far more funny in their absurdity. "Have a bit a muffin." Brilliant. That's some funny stuff.
He's inconsistent
David Brent was, like Maggie, Darren and Barry, a more consistent character. In Extras, Ricky Gervais alternates between Andy Millman, the podcasting Ricky Gervais and David Brent. He is, in one scene, cool, condescending and cringingly crude - but rarely consistent.
It's difficult to sympathise with him
It's like how do you relate to 50 Cent, now that he's off the street and making millions? Okay, bad example. I doubt many of you were ever on the street, or being shot at for that matter. I don't even like rap...what's my point? My point is, by the second series of Extras, Andy Millman's biggest gripe is that he's late for a meeting with Al Pacino. It's hardly Dog Day Afternoon.

There is no doubting Ricky Gervais's enormous talent. The man has actually made me wee laughing. That's funny. But, with Extras, there is something wrong. And I dread to think that it's Ricky Gervais.

I hope with his next project he can either deliver a character as creative and consistent as David Brent or remain behind the cameras as a stellar screenwriter and director. Maybe we'll see more of writing partner Stephen Merchant. Give him a spin-off show with Barry off Eastenders and I might just wee myself. That's some funny stuff. Right there.

S&M

2006-10-25T23:13:00.000+01:00

When my local Marks & Spencer revealed its new store layout last week I was a bit disappointed to find that access to the food hall no longer required a trip through the lingerie section.

It had always been something of a guilty pleasure, having to wade through thongs and things to get to the groceries.

Now however when I want, say, some milk or...baps I can take the escalator directly to the food hall.

But I did notice today that, while I'm quite missing the scantily clad mannequins of the lingerie section, M&S seems to have transformed from department store for the elderly into, what looks like, sex shop for the single.

There is definitely an air of eroticism beyond the wireframed undercup of the lingerie department. Mannequins in ladies' clothes hold hands and look adoringly into each others' plastic eyes; they wear Basques and hang from poles, like exotic dancers; and, as I was leaving the store, I noticed a mannequin in that most suggestive of positions: dressed in office attire, bending over a table!

As I went to push the door I saw two letters, backwards through the glass: S&M. Is this the secret to M&S's recent success? I guess the clothes weren't selling so well so they tried the one thing that does in abundance: sex.

Tony Blair rocks out.

2006-10-18T08:21:00.000+01:00

George Bush and Tony Blair sing 'Endless Love'

FHA

2006-10-17T21:50:00.000+01:00

Oh, sweet relief. Some good news today: apparently only three of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (FHA) are bad. One of them is God! I did not know that. I do now!

I had a chat with a couple of Christian chaps on Pride Hill today. One of them had some sort of American accent and looked like a member of Hanson (he also had like ketchup on his shirt or something); the other was from India but looked black. The whole thing was weird. But they were nice kids.

And so I figured while God himself might not removeth thy stain from thy shirt I might as well donate some money in the hope that the Church might offer some sort of laundry service. Plus, the posters they were selling actually looked pretty cool. The one I bought depicted three horsemen in drab, dull looking clothes, brandishing bloody swords and what looked like nunchucks, and another on a white horse, in clean, newly pressed cricket whites. He also had white hair, a white beard and a mean looking bow and arrow. He was God, apparently.

"Is that God?" I asked.
"Well yeah," replied the Christian. "That's Jesus."
"Wow," I said. "That's really a relief."

And so I gave him a pound and went about my way. I might not hang the poster on my wall but knowing that only three of the Four Horsemen are a problem seems one less thing to worry about.

The red, white and blues

2006-10-11T21:46:00.000+01:00

As a medieval town Shrewsbury's epicentre is a castle that sits atop a hill - Pride Hill, to be exact, also the namesake of one of Shrewsbury three shopping centres.

The Darwin Shopping Centre is nearest the castle and generally considered the best of the three. Pride Hill is next - a little worse for wear, and then the Riverside Mall. If the Darwin is "king of the castle", then Riverside is something of a "dirty rascal", home to stores such as BeWise, TJ Hughes and Wilkinson, and frankly some of the strangest most miserable of Shrewsbury's inhabitants.

As the town's bottom-most shopping centre, the Riverside Mall sits quite literally in the shadow of its competitors, its customers generally those unable to climb stairs or inclines. Hence, there are a lot of old people and prams in the Riverside Mall. There is also a terrible sense of doom. Yesterday there was even jazz, but it did little to lift the mood of mall staff.

"Ah, bet that's lovely, getting to hear that jazz all day," I said to the assistant, as live music from a 'grand opening' party drifted into the store.
"Well," she sighed as she closed her eyes and clutched her head. "Don't get me started on that."
"Oh...okay," I said.
Hang on, I thought. What does she mean? "What do you mean?" I asked.
"Well, it's not my cup of tea," she said, still clutching. "That, out there." With that she used her other hand to point to the black lady singing old standards.
"What?" I asked, intrigued.
"Music."
"You don't like music?"
"Well," she brought her hand down to her side. The clutching had left little white marks on her forehead. "In my own time I do - "
"Right."
" - but I'm working."
"Yeah...did you say you had this in another colour?"
"Only what's on the shelf love," she said abruptly. "If it's not on the shelf we don't have it in stock. OK?"

And so I smiled, bought it in red and stepped out into the mall to see that the jazz band were packing away. "Tough crowd, huh?" I said to the drummer. "Perhaps you ought to play the blues next time."
He looked at me blankly.
"You know, give the people what they want?"

The future's bright. The future's useless.

2006-09-29T19:22:00.000+01:00

After two days of presentations and for the most part being asked "is television dead?", Emma and I decided to leave the 'Buzz Hall' of Cross Media Week's main conference building for the 'Tree House', and a line-up of speakers and presentations very much more alive.

'New Interfaces - How to interact with a connected world' presented the studies and developments of four scientists working in the field of advanced media interfaces.

The most impressive was John Underkoffler, inventor of g-speak gestural interface technology and advisor to Steven Spielberg. G-speak replaces a conventional computer mouse with a glove that allows the user to point, push, pull and grab objects within a 3D graphical user interface.

If John de Mol was right yesterday and "the meaning is in the use," what followed was impressive but mostly meaningless presentations. Dr. Emile Aarts from Philips Research Laboratories premiered LED technology that lit a room according to scenes in a film, placing the viewer in an immersive environment; a collaborative canvas on which two children could virtually paint together and thus, to quote Dr. Aarts, "be kept off the streets, and from smacking one another"; and, the most useless of all, LED fabric apparently best demonstrated by a soft cushion that bore a pink glowing heart.

Though I won't be running out to buy one of those, if Jo Reid from HP Labs gets her way school children will be running from creatures great and small as she subjects them to what she calls, "Virtual Experience Environments" - or what anyone else might call, "placing small children in horrifying situations." The technology allows schools to advance their pupils by allowing them to walk around existing environments, such as playgrounds and parks, and make them virtual by attaching audio and video feeds of scenes from the Discovery Channel: riots in Northern Ireland, hunting in the Savannah, the Second World War.

The future's bright, I thought to myself. It's also a little bit useless.

This is a low

2006-09-28T23:20:00.000+01:00

There's an old Indian saying - "do not judge a man until you've walked two moons in his moccasins." That's a lot of moonwalking and, when you're in the Netherlands, an uncomfortable trot in wooden clogs.

Nevertheless, I squeezed into a pair (metaphorically, of course) and trotted to an infamous 'coffee shop' in the Red Light District. (Where else would I suggest when accompanying my boss on a business trip?)

It was horribly garish. And utterly uninspired. A Rastafarian at the counter, toad stools for chairs and Japanese tourists sucking on spliffs, making peace signs for pictures.

The 'buffalo soldier' at the bar turned down the music, the crowd sang loudly and while everyone else got high I thought to myself, this is a low.

The Week that Lies Ahead

2006-09-27T17:18:00.000+01:00

On the journey from Shrewsbury to Amsterdam my boss, Emma, asked what I had hoped to see in the week that lay ahead. I thought for a moment and answered, "clogs...drugs...and whores."
"Right," she responded. "I sort of meant at the conference...?"
"Yeah, of course," I said, sheepishly. "Um..."

We're here for Picnic '06, Amsterdam's annual event for people interested and involved in cross media content and technology. It's part of Cross Media Week and, by the looks of its programme (which includes keynote presentations from MTV, Pixar, and craigslist.org) should be fantastic.

In the spirit of 'cross media', 'web 2.0' and other sort of faddish buzzwords, I'll be keeping you updated via my blog and my Flickr, bringing you highlights of the conference and whatever else I might see in the week that lies ahead.

Lip Service

2006-09-16T23:43:00.000+01:00

If you know me - even a little bit - you'll know of my extravagant, financially crippling, twice daily trips to Marks & Spencer. It's the reason my fridge is full of fancies, my cupboards stupendously stocked and my bank balance below the black. I take pride in having turned around an ailing company, but yesterday - after yet another social faux pas (and expensive lunch) - had very little to be proud of.

You see, I am so often in M&S that I consider it a sort of home from home. So when I see a familiar face I greet them as host - if a very rude, somewhat offensive host.

I was on my way out of the shop yesterday when I saw one such familiar face - or rather, back of head - perusing the cake section of the food hall. In my home of course, inappropriate jokes are the norm and so I walked up from behind and close to her ear said, "a moment on the lips," at which point she turned around and I realised that she was not Jane Robbins, mother of Bill and Kate Mohin but absolute stranger and, frankly, offended lady.

"Excuse me?" she said.

I had started, I thought. Should I finish? 'A lifetime on the hips' then slap her on the arse and stroll off? I couldn't do that. I couldn't do anything. I just froze. With all the confidence with which I had approached her it didn't even seem that I had mistook her for someone else. It looked like I was some kind of fat police, patrolling the cake section warning people off their desserts. I might as well have said, "you've had enough, fatty. Do you really think you ought to be buying cake?"

I thought all this as I stood there, going red before this not unattractive yet very offended lady. And so, like the policeman of my imagination, sort of smiled and bobbed as I walked away. As I did I saw her put the cake back on the shelf. It was a little thing. But yes, I suppose it did make me feel a little bit proud.

Surely, quote of the day.

2006-09-01T09:18:00.000+01:00

"They wanted to set an example out of me... Who knew the black buck? I mean today because of me, people know there's an endangered species of deer called black buck, well it's actually an antelope."

Salman Khan
BBC News

Kevin's head

2006-08-29T21:14:00.000+01:00

"It's a bit worrying that you're this tired after warming up," said Kevin, my gym instructor and, officially, the most annoying person I have ever met.
I wheezed something about being okay.
"Let's move on to the cross trainer," he said, as he lifted me, all limp, from the exercise bike to the next machine.

I surveyed the device and thought of ways to appear like I was working out without actually exerting myself any further. I decided this was best achieved by simply pulling on the bars with my arms, back and forth, propelling myself into some sort of exercise. As I did, Kevin watched my heart rate on the monitor and calculated, in his tiny head, at which point I should stop.
"You're 23..." he muttered, "220 minus..." Then, looking again at the monitor, "Yep. Stop there." With that he slammed the stop button and I became all limp again.

The next thing I know, I'm half way home, limp on a bench, about to throw up. But all I see is a bin with a roof on and an opening around its sides large enough to deposit a banana skin or an apple core. With little choice and just enough turgidity in my neck to tilt it I threw up the best I could into its little opening. The turgidity in my neck gave way and I slumped back into the bench, all limp. I imagined that the bin, oozing with my vomit, was Kevin's head, and suddenly felt much, much better.

The Weights Are The Hardest Part

2006-08-28T22:46:00.000+01:00

The last time I ventured into a gym was during my university days. Well, it was really just the one day. And a gym induction. The tour alone was enough to give me a stitch and, needless to say, I am in no better shape today than I was two years ago.

Since then, I have graduated from the exercise regimes of walking across campus, to walking to the train station, to finally walking downstairs to my kitchen, as my daily commute has shortened in stages. (Next year I imagine I'll be working in my sleep.)

Working from home provides me with almost no exercise at all and at 23, a quite worrying shortness of breath. So it seemed as good a time as any, perhaps even a crucial time, to join the gym.

And when I did, I met Kevin, my gym instructor, and possibly the most annoying guy I have ever met.

"So, you want to join the gym."
"Yes. I want to join the gym."
Without looking he reached for a clipboard under his desk, as per the drill, and grabbed a pen from behind his ear - clicking it more times than was necessary. "Right," he said. "Let me walk you through the form."
Although I wondered if there could be anything more difficult than my name, address and billing details, I nodded all the same.
"Okay. The first bit. It's first name first...and then...is it second name?" He looked over at a framed picture of the gym founder as if for confirmation. "Yeah, second name."
"First name, second name," I confirmed. "Yep, got it."
"Then address." He looked to that section of the form and then to me. "Do you know your address?"
"Yep. Pretty sure I do."

It continued like this until the second page and the section, 'Your Exercise Goals.'
"Right. What sort of stuff do you want to do? Like, general fitness..." Then, looking in my direction, "bulk up?"
"Yeah, just general fitness really."
"And bulk up probabl-"
"No. That's fine. Just...general fitness."
"General fitness..." he repeated, jotting it down on the form, "...bulk up..."
"Not bulk up."
"Okay," he said, clicking his pen shut. "So, a bit of cardiovascular this week. And next week...weights."

Supercuts

2006-08-06T17:56:00.000+01:00

I'm about the same height, have the mild manners of a reporter and have even been known to slip into a pair of tights (though, admittedly, not my own). There are, people say, similarities between this man and the Man of Steel. An ex-girlfriend went as far as claiming that my mannerisms were adopted directly from the 1978 Christopher Reeve incarnation - bumbling and bashful, nervously pushing my glasses up the bridge of my nose. (When ironically, the habit is, in actual fact, the result of an accident that took place on a ride named, funnily enough, after the Superman of my doppelganger. I banged my head against the side of the carriage, lost the nosepiece of my spectacles and have since battled gravity as it insists on sending my frames sliding down my face.)

When I saw Brandon Routh's - even better - impression of Christopher Reeve in Superman Returns, I decided to trade my choppy chops for a more sensible side parting, thus completing the look. Armed with a copy of Empire magazine and its feature on Superman Returns I headed to the hair dressers (of several blog entries) and explained what I wanted.
"Can you do this?" I asked, pointing to a photograph of Routh, a floppy side parting, adorning his brow.
"Sure," said the hairdresser, before she started hacking away.

Now, I'm no stylist (though you might think so if you saw my array of styling products) but I know that, to achieve said look, all I needed was a quick trim to the back and sides. Imagine my concern then when, twenty-five minutes later she's still hacking furiously away. And though I couldn't see much without my glasses I could see that I was losing a lot of hair and, just within my field of vision, my copy of Empire Magazine and the photo of Brandon Routh, beside which stood a bald-headed Kevin Spacey, posing as Superman's arch enemy, Lex Luthor.

"Hang on," I said, putting on my glasses, and turning to my hairdresser. "What are you doing?"

Giving 'Tom Jones' the boot

2006-08-05T17:39:00.000+01:00

It's not often that you find a big name, like Tom Jones, thrust back into your life - not least, into your car. But it was not long after writing about his unusual appearance in Shrewsbury that I found myself, quite literally, stuffing Tom Jones into the boot of my Nissan Micra. Let me explain.

I was sent by my employer to the offices of the Town Council to collect some banners that we had produced for a marketing campaign, and was met with the confused looks that you might expect from an overstaffed, under performing local governing body.

"I'm sorry, we have no record of a collection for today," said the receptionist.
"But I called ahead," I said. "I recognise your voice."
"Right," she said. "But there's nothing on the system."
"Yes, because I'm here. I'm standing here," I said. "You told me to come down."
"Right," she said again, looking no less confused. "Bear with me a second."
After some delay she returned from what appeared to be nothing more than 'thinking time' and suggested that the banners I was looking for might be those rolled and stacked against the wall.

I looked at them and after a similar, perhaps spiteful delay, agreed to take them. It was only when I got to the car and began stuffing them into my boot that I realised, from reading what was visible on the rolled up banners, that the letter 'J' didn’t appear anywhere on our marketing campaign. Concerned that these were indeed the wrong banners, I unrolled one onto the pavement and sure enough, it read: "'Tom Jones' here!" You could see how the Council had attempted to avoid confusion by sticking black tape inverted commas around the words 'Tom Jones.'

Even so, I considered taking them home and fixing them to the outside of my apartment building in the hope that, one day, perhaps on his way home to Wales, the singer might stop, confused by the sign, and feel obliged to perform. Though, in Shrewsbury, an adaptation of an 18th century novel is more likely to knock on your door.

It was a bit unusual

2006-07-13T21:55:00.000+01:00

Clever marketing ploy? Or dumb oversight? The Shrewsbury Theatre Guild attracted some less gruesome attention to the crime capital of the county this week when its adaptation of an 18th Century novel was mistaken for Welsh balladeer and heartthrob, Tom Jones.

"Tom Jones here!" the banner, somewhat misleadingly screamed, as it hung by the Castle, prompting middle aged women across the county to rush out, buy tickets and lob some knickers in excitement.

"Can you believe Tom Jones is playing here?" Even Shrewsbury's young began to ask, having only been witness to one other pop music event in their lifetimes - the not unusual arrest of Pete Doherty for possession of Class A drugs.

There were, however, some non-believers. "So some big name is booked to play Shrewsbury. Big deal," said one man. "He'll only cancel. What's new...?"

The Pussycat Dolls in the Quarry?

"Whoah-oh-whoah-oh-whoaah-ooh," said the Theatre Guild, when asked to comment.

It has subsequently added inverted commas to the title of its play, adding that the overwhelming interest in tickets was "a bit unusual."

A Not-So Superplan

2006-07-10T22:08:00.000+01:00

If you know me/have read my blog/been in ear-shot of any number of recent conversations you'll know that I'm very excited about the UK release of Superman Returns this Friday.

So excited, in fact, that I rushed out - faster than a speeding bullet - and bought more tickets than people I know. Anxious, perhaps optimistically, that the Man of Steel's return to the Silver Screen would sell out, I spent more money than logic today when booking seats over the Internet - reserving two for the 12:30pm showing in Shrewsbury, another two for 1pm that same day in Telford, and two more for an 8pm showing later that evening.

That's six tickets, for three showings - two of which commence within a half hour of each other, are in two towns 10 miles apart and one frankly expensive and badly planned day.

Worse still, Pete's working, Emma's in London, Beth's in York (and is so sick of Superman and its oft-quoted trailer - "the world doesn't need a saviour...and neither do I" - she wouldn't come anyway); and the only girl who might put up with my hand holding, tear welling, nausea inducing excitement is gone, in a similar and badly planned break-up. If I'd have just hung on...

I don't know what's more depressing: that I don't know five other people to take to the cinema, that I can't work an online booking form, or that I'll be watching perhaps the most eagerly anticipated movie event of my adult life alone, in an ill fitting Superman costume, with an empty seat beside me to put my red polyester cape.

Super.

Town of Flowers

2006-07-04T00:08:00.000+01:00

Shrewsbury - birthplace of Charles Darwin, home of 80s pop group T'Pau, town of flowers - became the scene of a murder probe Sunday morning when the bodies of two women were found in what police believe to be a massage parlour.

Since their discovery, the murder, as you might imagine, has been talk of the town. In talking about it, townsfolk - on three separate occasions - have asked of my whereabout Saturday night. This was mildly funny the first time. It then dawned on me that the question assumes two things: that I might a) frequent a "massage parlour", and b), perhaps more alarmingly, actually murder someone.

Also worrying is the fact that I don't have a great alibi. I, like most of the nation, watched Rooney stamp on Carvalho's balls Saturday but then left a house party early to travel from Wolverhampton back to Shrewsbury, with enough time to run a bath, have a sandwich and watch Big Brother. Probably enough time to knock out a couple of hookers.

It doesn't help that I often include the building suspected to be a massage parlour in my town tour to visitors, alluding to them the fact that I know of its place and purpose (though no more than it's blacked out windows and closed sign).

It probably works against me that I am like one of two people of colour living in the town centre. If a brown face was caught on CCTV I've a 50/50 chance of being interviewed. And I don't do well under that kind of pressure. I can't even stop from sweating when airport security ask if I packed my own bags.

However conspicuous at least I wasn't sporting ridiculous head gear Saturday night (for once). Apparently police are looking to interview a man who stayed late at a nearby pub, wearing a purple bandana and having taken part in a "pirate re-enactment."

A pirate re-enactment? A massage parlour? A murder? These things happen in Shrewsbury? This place is suddenly a lot more than a town of flowers.

My Hot Thighs

2006-07-03T21:44:00.000+01:00

Though many online forms and questionnaires have asked, I have - I promise you - never listed my thighs as my "best feature" (though this might be to blame for my lack of match.com action); so, rest assured, this entry is not about the hairy strip of flesh between my knees and nether-regions, sexy though that might be (to the depraved). It is rather about my burning lap, not the seat of exotic dancers, but home to my overheating Mac - cool by form, frickin' hot by function.

The MacBook Pro, released earlier this year, is one hot piece of assembled hardware, apparently fixed with thermal grease, which is causing some of the stylish laptops to reach temperatures of 129°F.

There's no doubt the MacBook Pro is packin' heat. But at those kind of temperatures new Mac users, like me, are no longer the cool kids of the computer world. And, though branded - quite literally - with the Apple logo, my thighs are no more attractive, though perhaps less hairy.

Warning from Apple: Don't put our laptops on your lap [via Engadget]

Superman Returns

2006-06-21T22:28:00.000+01:00

Superman's return to our big screens this summer will have fanboys, like me, wetting their little red underpants in excitement and might, potentially, give some approval for my often unpopular taste.

People jeer at my Jacko obsession (not those cool kids outside the gates Neverland, oh no); they scoff at my Dawson's Creek DVD collection; throw their drinks at my shiny white shoes and yell, "Oi, you! Gay boy!" Who's gay now? (Well, Superman, according to gay magazine The Advocate.)

But for once, it seems, something I like (in tights, nonetheless) has the approval of critics and the drink lobbing public alike, as the first reviews for Superman Returns give the new movie a resounding thumbs up.

Variety magazine's critic said it was "grandly conceived, sensitively drawn [and] never self-consciously hip".

"It is sincere, with an artistic elegance and a genuine emotional investment in the material," he wrote.

The Hollywood Reporter, meanwhile, saluted "a heartfelt Superman movie that plays to a broad audience".

Routh, it continued, plays the comic book character "with honesty [and] winning fortitude".

And Newsweek's David Ansen wrote: "From the start of this gorgeously crafted epic, you can feel that Singer has real love and respect for the most foursquare comics superhero of them all.

"Newcomer Routh may or may not be a real actor, but he effortlessly lays claim to the iconic role."

His comments were echoed by Harry Knowles on the Ain't It Cool News website, who described Superman Returns as "the film I was hoping and dreaming for".

"Just as Batman Begins relaunched an ailing Batman, it sends Superman into the stratosphere," he wrote.

Google This

2006-05-28T14:29:00.000+01:00

As part of the free service that www.statcounter.com provides I can see what keywords people are entering in Google to find my website. Here are some of my favourites:

dork on bike
booty consultant
macho men
solar generator briefcase retailers
arnie-who is your daddy?
swingers in telford
shit stained
black surfers
crazy ass lights
www.tiffanyrose.com

Dumped.com

2006-05-21T22:43:00.000+01:00

Since failing to meet the requirements that secure my money back guarantee, not to mention being stood up and having thrown up, my match.com subscription had finally rendered itself useless, usurped finally by MySpace and that other playground of romance, the real world, in which I had recently found some success.

Suzie, affectionately referred to in a previous post as “the one that came along,” had been coming along rather well, for want of a better word. That is, we’d been seeing each other for a few weeks. Anything beyond a few dates is somewhat miraculous for me, having dated women with children, ex-husbands and mental illnesses. (A background check revealed no history of these things.)

Excited by this and, hedging my bets somewhat, I made my last move on Match.com to, remarkably, decline a date with a not unattractive young lady. “I’m sorry,” I wrote. “I met someone.” Imagine my surprise then when that someone uses the same online service to send me a virtual wink (see Can’t buy me love) and essentially invites me to view her own match.com profile.

“22-year-old woman,” it began, “seeking women 18-35.”

Now, we’ve not yet had that talk about our “relationship”, whether indeed there is one, and whether, of course, we are seeing other people. By sending me a virtual wink via match.com, Suzie answered some of those questions, sure, but raised others too. Let’s start with what we do know. We are, I guess, seeing other people. In fact, we’re actively seeking other people. We are actively seeking homosexual relationships.

By alerting me to her match.com profile is Suzie suggesting that I am a) “women aged 18-35”, or b) dumped, ceremoniously, with a wink and a new agenda or, rather, a new gender?

Ladies Man

2006-05-15T21:32:00.000+01:00

I’m sorry that I haven’t written for so long. I guess I haven’t done anything stupid in a while. Not since seeing She’s the Man, sleeping with my ex-girlfriend or making excessive international calls on my mobile, all of which are detailed below and, incidentally, involve members of the opposite sex.

It was only a matter of time that one would come along; I would do something stupid and, if nothing else, get to share it on my blog. Luckily for me however, Suzie, the one that did come along, finds the stupid things that I do quite charming. (I’ll give her ‘til the end of this blog entry.)

“The female of the species,” so wrote Rudyard Kipling (and sang 90s band, Space), “is more deadly than the male.” And though they’ve not yet proven fatal (though I hope that’s how I’ll go), just being around them is something of a scarring experience for me. Quite literally.

I wrote in Your Hapless Hero of the nosebleed that ruined a barbeque and in Word of Mouth about the mouth sores that precede even the slightest chance of sex. I was suffering from neither come my date with Suzie when I stepped into the shower, and the elaborate routine that is my getting ready, to find I had no hot water. This is, to me, like having no water at all. How was I to double-shampoo, apply my leave-in conditioner, have a hot towel shave?

And while these are issues that concern the metrosexual male, plumbing is not. So I set about getting some help. And when it finally arrived, three days later, it was exactly as I imagined. The plumber’s name was Kev, and he said things like, “ooh, this looks like a bigger job than I thought”, “I’m going to have to order another part”, and something about football that I didn’t understand.

Either way, he left not having fixed my plumbing and with the realisation that, worse than a nosebleed, worse even than the mouth sores, I stank. I hadn’t showered in days. And I had a second date with Suzie. What was I going to do?

I decided I would shower at my gym. But then I realised I don’t have a gym. I know a gym, sure, but it’s not mine, I’m not a member, and I’ve never got beyond the gym tour or over the stitch that it gave me. But this was a matter of personal hygiene, I told myself; personal appearance. And so I called ahead and asked if I could.

Worse than the idea of exercising was the thought of taking a communal shower. But once I got there and changed out of my clothes, I stumbled in blindly, without my glasses, and found there were curtains that divided the shower room into cubicles. Better still, there was no-one there. Pulling the curtain to, I began the first of two shampoos. This was great, I thought. As I applied the leave-in conditioner, I read the ad that hung on the wall. “Stay shower fresh all day,” it read. That would be nice, I thought. And how do I do that? “Use Always Ultra Panty Liner.”

Just then, two female voices entered the room, their pedicured feet showing from under the shower curtain. Thinking mine were conspicuously hairy I edged back towards the wall (and the panty liner advert) and wondered what the hell I was going to do. The female of the species might be deadly, but, when it comes to personal hygiene, apparently they’re no match for the metrosexual male. One shampoo and no conditioning later they had left and so too did I, squinting as I did to see the ‘Ladies’ sign on the door.