One month on

So the task didn't exactly go according to plan this month. I'll tell you for why.

One week into my trauma and orthopaedics rotation, I played a bit of sunday night football and during that sunday night football, I managed to damage myself. My right little finger took the brunt of a fall onto the turf and, working in a hospital in amongst hand specialists, I got myself checked out. Turns out that I have a volar plate injury. Now by no means is this a crippling injury but in terms of playing guitar obsessively and improving my string skills...well you can imagine it's not quite cricket.

So anyway, that aside, in other news, I have witnessed the return of my doppelganger. Now this person, whoever it may be, simply will not leave me alone. It seems he has ventured out of London and is now closer to my place of work in Reading. The other day, I was stopped in the street by a reasonably old and slightly creepy man. He carried a Tescos bag in one hand, the contents of which looked dubious. His exact words were, 'You were in the shop weren't you.' It was a statement and not a question. Needless to say, I was most certainly not in the shop - something that I proceeded to tell him in no uncertain terms. At first he refused to believe me (no word of a lie). When I again reiterated that I had in fact not been in any commercial outlets that day, he replied with the words, 'well it was someone who looked EXACTLY like you.' The identity of this imposter continues to evade me. One day I'll find him. One day.

Of note this month, I have been surprisingly successful in celebrity spots. Having ended the month with a week off to continue the 3rd draft of my novel (Its coming along well), I found myself first of all face to face with KT Tunstall. In real life, as my FB posts will tell you, she is very small. But also pretty damn hot. And then I saw Nadia from Big Brother. Not as good a spot, I'll grant you but a spot nonetheless.

Anyway, not much more to tell you. Next month, I depart from London for good and I will be moving into my new flat if all goes well. It will be a sad but exciting time. As such it promises to be a busy month full of recovering volar plates and possibly some developing six packs.

Until next time.

W

I'm back!

So it's been a while. I thought it would be appropriate to kick start my new blogging extravaganza as I come to the end of my first six months back at work. In some ways it has flown, though in others, my year out seems a long way back. I move from general medicine next week onto trauma and orthopaedics, and in their wisdom, they have started me on call. This means one very simple thing - for all those in the Reading area of the UK, it would be a pretty bad idea to break any bones next Wednesday. Just saying.

As I mentioned in my last blog, I wanted to create a video that summed up everything I did in my year out which I have done. It lasts 35 minutes, so I'll only put it up on youtube for those who are interested. Otherwise, if you see me around, get me to play it to you! It serves as a great memory, but as they say the show must go on.

In the last six months, I have got back into medicine, bought a flat and finished the second draft of my novel. The novel requires one more draft I think before I release it to a wider audience so stay vigilant. The band Gun Hill Riffs have really developed as well and we are now on the verge of releasing an EP and commencing some regular gigs. We have a website - http://gunhillriffs.com/ - so be sure to check us out and spread our songs!

The purpose of restarting the blogs is two fold. Firstly, it's a great way to document things that happen and hopefully share some cool stuff. Secondly, its a way to push myself forward once again by way of the tasks that I left back in my year out. With work a large part of my life once again, it is sensible I think to reduce these from weekly tasks to monthly tasks. This gives me the chance to address things from a slightly different angle but as always, there will be a list to tick off on this blog, full of old tasks not quite managed and new ones still to be conquered. As always, suggestions are welcome. (Nothing too illegal)

I'm going to kick off this month with something a bit different. I have been playing guitar since I was about 16 but in the past few months seem to be playing the same songs over and over with the band. This is no bad thing of course, but I now set myself the task of bettering my skills on the strings and diversifying my style. Difficult to benchmark I know but something to focus on.

So, next month I will return and tell you what's been going down, how my task has been going and anything else awesome that pops into my head. Suggestions and comments are welcome, as are pints of beer. Until next time!

The End

So, I have come to the end. Before I bring things to a close, a word or two about my final challenges. As you may know, one of my tasks was to buy an antique and sell it for a profit. You may also know that I went to Portabello Road market and bought a rather dashing draughts and backgammon set for a hard fought £10 and promptly placed it on ebay. 

 I can now tell you the outcome...I sold the board. The price? £10.49. That's right, I succeeded in my challenge by 49p. But a profit is a profit (providing we forget about the postage and packaging excess above the ebay allowance.)

Now for my final task. You have seen me back flip in stages throughout the year and the final challenge was to complete a full back flip from standing position. Below, I have uploaded two pieces of evidence that show I have completed this, bringing my tasks to an end.

All good things must come to end, and so too must the previous 12 months. As this is posted, I am  no longer on my year out - back to the day job! This year has been one of the best in my life so far and it is no cliche when I say it has flown by. I've achieved a lot, met some fantastic people, been to some inspiring places, learned many lessons and gained a plethora of skills, some of which I can build upon and some of which are completely useless. Last week I'm proud to say I finished the first draft of my novel and can honestly say it was a hugely enjoyable and rewarding process.

If you were to ask me what the biggest lesson I had learned from this year was though, I would have to leave my tasks and escapades aside for a moment. Above all a year is a long time, and as I think I have shown, if you apply yourself well, you can get a lot done. Conversely, it can also seem like a very short period of time and if you don't take these opportunities when they arise, they can pass you by. There is no doubt that this year has been important.

I am now embarking upon the rest of my career as a doctor - hopefully a long and successful one. There is still a lot to do and now that I have started, I know there is more to come. These blogs have been a great way for me to document what I have been getting up to and hopefully they have been a source of entertainment and at least some mild amusement for some of you. I am privileged to have met many great characters this year and would like to take this opportunity to say thank you to those who have supported this project and left such positive messages along the way.

So, I will take my leave for now. I will be putting an extended video montage of the year up at some point and if people would like, I will return in a month or so after settling back into normal life with a new project - monthly tasks! And with that, I bring this adventure to a close.

W

Antiques and Fire

This week I'm pretty sure I broke my toe. Because of my massively high pain threshold and unrivalled levels of manly braveness, I've not made such a big deal about it. I think I did it mid back flip on a trampoline but I can't be sure. But either way, I've totally broken my toe.Nevertheless, it takes more than broken bones to stop me, which brings me onto one of my tasks for the last week.

I ventured over to Portobello Road market - an experience in itself - and I scoured its depths for an antique the likes of which has never been seen so I could sell it on for a profit. My accomplished nose for antiques finally settled upon a backgammon and draughts board, exquisitely carved from the finest mahogany. I then became embroiled in an epic battle of wits with the vendor, spanning the extremes of pricing and challenging the boundaries of barter economy. He offered £15. I declined and offered £10. He took it.

And here it is!

You can currently see this on ebay where it boasts one current bid of £3 and 4 watchers. I repeat 4 whole watchers. It is well fun, and may just have awoken an ebay monster in me. The gavel drops on Thursday so you will hear the results in my next blog.

A shout out this week also to the man who spotted me 10p in the post office. He saw I was unable to pay for an envelope due to my lack of 10 pennies (something I will easily be able to afford when I sell my backgammon board for thousands) and paid for me. What a nice guy. If only there were more people like him in the world.

Onto my last item on the agenda this week and I'm afraid it's not good news. I have to announce my second failure of the year after the lockpicking affair. This week, I attempted to make fire in the style of Ray Mears. I diligently collected the required types of wood, looking like a nutter in the woods carrying a bag of sticks. I returned to set about making the flames.I tried, I really tried. The wood however was not good enough and as you all know, a good workman cannot take any blame if his tools are not sufficient.

So, this week I learned something very important. If I ever found myself in a survival situation in which fire was required, I would die.

Until next week.
W

Voice Overs

Bit of fun this week. Tried my hand at voice overs. I think that being a voice over artist would be a tremendous way of life. Rock up to a comfortable recording studio, perhaps cradling a warm beverage, read through some basic lines of dialogue and then speak words into a microphone before collecting a pay packet every time it is replayed. What's not to like?

With that in mind, I have produced a voice over reel which now stands available for those who would like to hear it. Random I know. But fun.

So in addition to all of this, I allowed a friend to take me along to a Spanish event in central London and it was very interesting indeed.  As you enter, you place a sticker on your chest stating the language you speak and the language you are learning - they call it an intercambio. Needless to say, the number of times someone came up to me and spoke to me in words that I simply did not understand was high. That was half the fun though and in the end I befriended several Spaniards and one Czech girl who thought I looked like Arsenal player Thomas Rosicky. Not 100% pleased with that.

So, my mission continues.Anyone wants me to provide my voice for events, recordings, advertisements, then just let me know!

World Records

This week has been warm. We all know that. The tarmac has begun to make the roads slippery and it would also seem some of the train tracks have melted. But the weather is not the only thing hot off the press. Oh no. This week I broke a world record.

Now when I began to devise a list of things to do at the start of this year, I put 'break a world record' down, not really thinking about the implications of completing such a task. As time went on, it became clear that it was in fact going to be very difficult to do something better than anyone has ever done on record. I had suggestions, yes. One of these, as I recall, was to wear a particularly comfortable Jedi costume for as long as possible. This was clearly as impractical as it was desirable.

Having turned my thoughts to what I'm good at, I struggled. The term 'jack of all trades but a master of none,' has applied to me in the past. But now I have finally found something that I can forge ahead with as a master above all others...

Ear wiggles.

Above you see my successful attempt to beat 86 ear wiggles in 30 seconds previously set by some bloke in India.My attempt clocked up 89 wiggles. I found several attempts of this record on youtube and they all seemed to lead to one website. Recordsetters. I am now at the top of this list. Here is the link ... http://rec.st/i07q1 ... and just for fun, below is a screenshot.

Unfortunately I have still got some work to do in convincing Guinness that this is a valid record category but I will not let them sleep until they accept. This cannot take anything away from my achievement. And in the mean time, on to my next escapade.

W

Last Month: knots and doppelgangers

So, we reach the beginning of the end. July will be my last month as a man of relative leisure. Things have gone fast, that's for sure but no time to dwell on that for now. I have still been tied up with lots of activities in the past week. I had a busy week at work and with that always comes the potential for tempers to fray - never fear, my colleagues up at Airedale Hospital were as pleasant and cheery as they always have been. That said, I do believe last week may have been the last time I ever work up there (unless events take strange turns in the future) - so I would like to take this opportunity to big it up. A lovely place to work, some tremendous people and some fond memories.

I have been experimenting with a few tasks this week. One of these has been knot tying. Great fun and very useful - if I were to find myself in certain survival situations that is. Youtube has been my ally here and it should be noted that listening to people describing knots on headphones can have a strange calming effect over you. Good to go to sleep to. Also good to send you to sleep is watching videos on ways to convert between different units of measurement such as fahrenheit to celsius. As you can imagine, this is for very different reasons. Nonetheless, I'm glad I roped myself into it as both efforts were useful and informative and have served to bolster my general knowledge of things.

In order to take advantage of the long working week, I took the opportunity to use this as my week without TV. As expected, it was well hard. But not as hard as I had expected. As long as there is something there in its place, it's easy to string along. Although I did find myself singing the Frasier theme tune pretty much all week - maybe some sort of weird withdrawal symptom - and the fact that I missed 5 episodes of Neighbours was also somewhat distressing.Knot to worry.

One last thing to add. If anyone thinks they see me in London (or indeed anywhere in the world) then do let me know. If it turns out that I am nowhere near you then it may turn out to be the mysterious doppelganger that has been lurking, mainly up until now, in the London area. I have had several reports of this strange - but probably incredibly dashing -  individual crossing paths with people I know that were convinced it was me and so if you see him, do knot let him go. Grab him, find out who he is and tell him to stop tormenting me.

Together we can solve the mystery.

So, as we come to the last month, I have decided that the weekly task has now served its purpose. I have several final bits and pieces that I want to complete before things end and these are listed at the end of this blog. They will be completed on an ad hoc basis from now on and so the next few blogs will be a surprise. In addition to these, I will be finishing off my novel and consolidating all that I have learn this year. So sit tight and observe. W

Complete my back flip training
Produce fire like Ray Mears
Buy and sell an antique for a profit
Attempt a world record
Learn how to moonwalk