Pledging my Time

Regular readers of this blog - I giggle slightly as I write that phrase - might well have realised that there has been more than a slight delay in the appearance of this latest entry. Full of enthusiasm, drive and countless work-free hours, the first 9 entries bombed along at a relentless pace, suggesting at one stage that this would become a daily blog to rival Mark Waton's 10-year commitment. Unfortunately, the dream died early and before I knew it the blog became one of those things that, like the Lego kit you got for Christmas when you were 6, you take one look at every now and again but soon find yourself drifting mercilessly towards the shiny moving images on the nearest screen, remembering the well-known truth that it is far easier to be entertained than to entertain. Still, there is more than a chance that someone out there is waiting for the latest entry ('hi Mum!') and so I am pledging renewed efforts to at least offer an occasional glimpse into my disturbingly congested world.

The novel - the 'real' writing as opposed to this 'fake' writing (see blog entry number 8) - is coming along nicely and hopes to be with you shortly, hopefully not as a permanent replacement for the blog but perhaps as a consistent presence, an old friend to turn to while you're waiting for words to appear on the screen. The plan is to enlist my enormous internet following in some sort of publicity crusade so that publishers and book sellers across the country feel they have little choice but to ensure that people start uttering phrases such as 'Harry who?' and 'Da Vinci...didn't he write a code or something like that?'. 

In the latest section (Spoiler alert!), a character has just been faced with the prospect of losing valuable items in his wallet and finds himself despairing over the fact that he will no longer be able to use the 50p voucher off the cost of a box of Organic Tea and will need to fill in another form to get a replacement library card. As you can see, he is concerned about the important things and, like all of us, has a wallet full of items that fit into the 'you never know' category. This may not be the most inspiring 'get involved' plea you've ever heard, but to get the ball rolling again with the whole 'leaving comments' thing that I'm hoping one day might take off, why don't you post a comment letting us know the oddest/oldest item you've got in your wallet. And, while you're at it, we've now reached the magic number 10 in terms of blog entries and so if anyone fancies a stab at naming the artist behind each of the 10 tracks used as my titles so far then please do. Special 'prizes' available to the best entries...

Starcrazy

The countdown to Christmas began this weekend as Simon Cowell TV once again usurped the nation's Saturday evenings by bringing us the first round of X-Factor auditions and so, for the next four months, we can all look forward to tabloid headings about the surprisingly dull misdemeanours of people you weren't interested in before Cheryl Cole told them they could sing and advert after advert reminding us that we can watch Louis Walsh in HD.
The first episode didn't disappoint - England, it seems, is still full of people for whom this 'means the world', who just 'need to be given a chance' so that they can 'give mum what she deserves'. My biggest concern, however, is over those people who say that 'all they do is sing'. Apparently, they sing when they get up, they sing when they're walking around the house, they sing when they're at work and they sing when they're going to sleep. Wasn't this what ASBOs were created for, or have sections of society been given permission to perform 24-hour musicals, a little like Mark Watson's 24-hour comedy show from the Edinburgh festival a few years back? I recently passed through a village with a 'No Cold Callers' sign - perhaps this is where all the 24-hour singers are kept, joined together in a pact not to be disturbed by the world of speech out there? In fact, if they do sing all the time then how exactly did they manage to tell the judging panel their name without bursting into an operatic aria?
If the return of the X-Factor didn't make this weekend crazy enough then Premier League football decided to chip in just to make sure. Three 6-0 victories gave Colin Murray the opportunity to play Iron Maiden at the end of Match of the Day 2, while the 'papers relished the opportunity to plaster '666' over the front of celebrating Newcastle fans. Teams not involved in those three matches must have wondered just what they did wrong - did they not get the memo that we were going for a clean sweep of 6-0s? The likes of Birmingham and Wolves, we hear, had been campaigning for a weekend of 1-0s across the board, Mick McCarthy calling it 'ludicrous' to expect his team to score two months' worth of goals in a single match.
And, to top it all off, I went to a wedding this weekend in which the couple got married for the second time in two months.
Strange days indeed.

Superman Tonight

I'm sorry to have disappointed my thousands of readers yesterday (on reflection, the 'millions' referred to in the previous blog was probably a little ambitious, but surely 'thousands' is a little closer...) by failing to write anything. Strictly speaking, I did write something, I just decided that the words looked better in my novel than on this blog - basically, the theory I'm working under is that if you think the content of this blog is even mildly entertaining then you will simply be unable to contain yourselves with excitement when the novel finally comes along. And, if the blog has been a crushing disappointment since day one, then perhaps you'll join me in beginning a nationwide campaign harassing every publisher until my novel is published and you can finally enjoy something I've written?
In the meantime, superheroes...
Stemming from the work I've done on my novel in the last day or two, in which I found myself referencing Flash Gordon, Superman, Batman and Spider-Man in the space of a page, I thought I'd write a brief blog about superheroes and ask for your suggestions for the ones who never made it onto our screens.
There are so many reasons to like the 4 that I've named:

Flash Gordon
1) The song by Queen
2) The fact that he has no actual powers but still manages to defeat anyone evil
3) The best line in a film ever - 'Flash, Flash I love you, but we only have fourteen hours to save the earth!'
4) Brian Blessed.

Superman
1) Take your glasses off, no-one can tell you're Clark Kent. Put them back on, you're Clark again! Who needs fancy disguises?
2) Being able to fly.
3) The awful acting of 'evil superman' in Superman 3 (I think), which simply makes you love the 'good superman' more!
4) His shameless wearing of his underwear on the outside

Batman
1) Batman Begins and The Dark Knight - or, to put it another way, Christopher Nolan.
2) The Bat Cave!
3) Alicia Silverstone as Bat Girl - what was that all about?!
4) 'Kerpow!', 'Whack!' and 'Thwop!'

Spider-Man
1) Carrying off a tight-fitting suit with remarkable grace and inspiring children everywhere to don the same outfit at parties.
2) Being the only superhero in this list to have a hyphen in their name (thank you to Adam for pointing this out).
3) Being able to swing on a spider's web - they always break when I try.
4) Successfully kissing the girl while hanging upside down.

As a brief test of the readership of this blog, why don't you use the comments facility below to let us know of your favourite and why you like them? Or which superhero should have been made that never was made? Hamster-Girl? Staple-gun-man? The Hole-Puncher? The possibilities are endless...
The best ideas will find their way into the novel. Well, you never know...

I can only disappoint u

I owe you two apologies this morning:
1) Despite initially averaging slightly more than one blog a day for the first five days, a weekend away left me with no choice but to fail miserably in my quest to post on a daily basis or, at least, made it quite clear that there was little point trying to emulate Mark Watson yet again by sprinting to the nearest internet cafe at five minutes to midnight or appointing a 'guest blogger' to keep my legions of fans happy while I sunned myself in Bedfordshire.
2) I have spelt 'you' without two of its letters in my title for this blog, my sense of loyalty to accuracy preventing me from correcting Mansun's spelling. (While we're on the subject of bands, a special prize goes to anyone who can name the artist behind each of the songtitles used in the blog so far, without resorting to Google, Bing or any other search engine, encyclopaedia or radio DJ.)
It has, I think, become rather fashionable recently to point out spelling, punctuation and grammar mistakes in articles, billboards, shop windows, blogs by Sam Lenton, etc., but I'd still like to try and ride on this wave of popularity for the purposes of today's post. You see, there may well come a time when 'you' can be quite acceptably spelt as 'u', apostrophes can be thrown into any word containing an s and the plural of house could be street. English is always changing and if enough people keep making the same mistakes then perhaps they will eventually no longer be considered mistakes and those of us inserting our semi-colons at just the right time will be the ones who look like fools.
Whilst driving home yesterday, I noticed a sign advertising 'Egg's' and thought how odd that they would sell off the individual parts of an egg and how strange that they hadn't written 'yolk' or 'white' after 'Egg's' to clarify what was on offer. And it doesn't stop at Eggs (note the correct absence of the apostrophe!). If an item is being sold in quantities larger than one then the opportunity is there for the nation's shopkeepers to show that they have learned the simple rule of apostrophes - wherever there's an s at the end of a word, put an apostrophe, just in case. Or something like that anyway.
The worst one I have come across though, the one that I still struggle to see a reason for was when I saw the word 'was' written as 'wa's'. Perhaps the writer was actually talking about the city of Wa in Ghana but, if so, you still have to question the lack of a capital letter, as well as the contextual irrelevance of the surrounding words. No, it seems that the only viable explanation for 'wa's' is that of panic, playing it safe by putting in an apostrophe because of the tempting presence of the s.
I think you are due a third apology of the morning:
3) A week after slaughtering Monday in 30 easy steps, I am now getting on my high horse (which is impressive for someone who once chickened out of riding a pony) and telling you the same things that we all got sick and tired of hearing about when Eats, Shoots and Leaves came out a few years back, whilst now opening up my own writing to intense scrutiny as my millions of readers (ah, I love hyperbole) check through every post so far with a fine tooth comb to catch me out and class me as just as bad as the 'egg's' and 'wa's' guys. Well, I guess I will just have to take that risk while promising you a lighter and more enjoyable topic in the days ahead.

Never Forget

Unconventional man that I am, I remembered my wedding anniversary today.
When this blog is eventually turned into the riveting plot of a summer blockbuster, as we have long-established that it undoubtedly will, the actor playing me (let's stick with Edward Norton for now) will no doubt be surprised to see his script insisting that he defies all Hollywood expectations and remembers important days and dates.
I am currently reading a rather fantastic novel by Mark Watson (we still haven't had that coffee, Mark) called 'Eleven', which considers the impact of our decisions, exploring the consequences of what we don't do as much as what we do do. So, for example, one character failing to successfully step in and prevent a boy being beaten up has, many steps down the line, inadvertently led to a man who had his Blackberry stolen by a fat kid with a knife accidentally sending an abusive text to his boss because he couldn't get to grips with his replacement phone when he was trying to send a message to the woman across the room he was flirting with. Sound complicated? Strangely, it really isn't and it makes an enormous amount of sense and leads me to reflect on just how significant our action or inaction can be.
Imagine, for a moment, that I did forget my anniversary today. My wife, now irritated and angered, overlooks feeding the cat. Not just that morning but for the entire day, which leads to the cat trundling off to a neighbour's house to get some food. The next day, after hundreds of pounds have been spent on 'forgiveness gifts', we set off in search of our cat. This leads to us coming across an out-of-control dog harassing an old man, whose stick has got stuck in the grating of a drain. Ever helpful, we step in to prise the stick out of the grate, whilst my wife seeks to pacify the dog by stroking it. However, as a cat-lover and someone with no experience of dogs, she makes a fateful mistake by trying to tickle its cheek, which causes it to bite out and almost take her hand between its bloodthirsty teeth. Frightened, she staggers backwards, knocking into the old man, whose stick goes flying out of his hand and through the windscreen of a passing car. The driver, who has borrowed the car from a friend, is left devastated and pulls up around the corner to call the owner, looking for the right words to explain what has happened. The owner is trying to sleep after a party on her street kept her up all night. The phone call jolts her out of bed and she reaches, half-asleep, across the bed-side table for her mobile. Knocking a glass of water over the phone, she screams out in frustration, which is only further compounded by the message her friend leaves on the answer-phone. Taking time to dry out the phone until it is ready to be used again, the owner now misses the call from the estate agent that says she needs to up her latest offer within the next hour or risk losing out on the dream house she'd been saving up for. The estate agent, needing to secure this sale to keep his job after a last warning the previous week, keeps ringing and ringing, wondering just how he'll explain to his wife and baby of 18 months that he won't be able to provide for them anymore. The mother, meanwhile, failed to see her baby walk into the coffee table because an unknown cat had just wondered into the garden. While in hospital, having the baby checked over, she receives a call from her husband telling her that the sale fell through and that his career is finished.
And all because I forgot to buy a card.

As it is my anniversary and it would be a good idea to show a little bit of public affection for my wife, permit me to quote Mr Watson (how about table tennis?) and say that I feel so lucky to have found my wife and I don't want her to die or anything, sentimental fool that I am.