Gymnastics

I've been working nights this week so I'm a little drowsy now but I'm out the other end and playing at a friend's wedding tomorrow. I'll be off to the practice studio as a result in a bit to brush up on the set.

However, I feel it is necessary to document my experience as a gymnast. I turned up at the venue, admittedly slightly hungover, expecting a state of the art gym complete with lifesaving safety equipment to help me from not breaking my neck. I was met with a small door in an arch underneath a railway bridge. Here's me looking 'up for it'.

You may or may not be able to see the scrawl on the door in chalk denoting the name of the premises. As you can see, a pretty professional enterprise.  I would also like to thank my friend Michelle for coming with me. I would have been 100% more awkward turning up to a majority female activity on my own.

Anyway, on entering I was actually slightly lifted (not literally), as the place at least had a toilet. We were all then subsequently put through our paces in forward and back rolls, hand stands and head stands. Verdict: It was actually pretty fun and as a result of the stretches at the start I was able to touch my toes with ease for the first time in a number of years.

Took me a while to bring up the issue of the backflip, but when I did at the end, the fact that our instructor Amelia didn't laugh in my face was encouragement enough. So, the game is on. I have £20 riding on this.  And that's a flipping lot of money.

Rather disturbingly though, on my way out, Amelia called out with the words, 'hey, are you guys cheerleaders?' Now on the one hand, in her mind it is plausible that I have the capacity to be a cheerleader. On the other, it is plausible in her mind that I have the capacity to be a cheerleader.

See you next time for my Christmas update.

Playing the Wine Glasses

This week has involved music, food and fun. Simple as that. After the hammer blow of the lock picking saga, I think I have just about managed to regroup. And it helps that it is becoming more and more festive. Indeed the decorations have shot up with a vengeance in the house. See below.

Now, before I get to the main task, I also managed to contribute to one of my other tasks by way of my culinary adventures in the kitchen. By this I mean that I cooked the first of what will be seven key dishes that I can reliably deliver at will, with devastating skill should the need arise.

Contrary to what you can see, it was actually quite tasty. And it had Hollandaise sauce in it which is generally understood in chefs' circles to be exclusively for the big boys.

Now onto the wine glasses. It was well fun. However, my efforts pale in significance to some of the stuff on youtube. You may say I have too much time on my hands but some people have taken it to a different level. With minimal practice and some scarce and fairly shoddy glasses, here's what I produced.

If you liked that, there will be a version of Silent Night on my youtube page. Given more time I could see myself getting obsessed with this activity. Almost as addictive as lockpicking and balloon animals!

I have a busy couple of weeks in line now so I think my next task will have to span both weeks.This includes an adult gymnastics class for the end of the week to get working on my back flip. (No joke).  Any suggestions for  bumper Christmas week tasks to perform to redeem myself would be much appreciated. In the meantime, I had a bit of free time so I rather randomly recorded this cover of Stand By Me. Hope you like it!

Lockpicking!

As you may or may not be aware, my task for this week was to 'master lockpicking'. I'm sorry to say that it is my first failure. Turns out picking locks is well hard.

It became clear early on that practice would be the key. However, as the week went by, it became more apparent that a miracle would be closer to the mark. I tried a few things and even plucked up the courage to walk into a key cutters to ask if they had any lock-picking tools. I was promptly told this would be unethical in a place that sells keys and I was on my way.

I really tried. Honest. And I don't like admitting defeat. I could have picked an easier task but I'm sure yale all agree that would have defeated the spirit of my year out.

To cap this disappointment off, I was involved in a spectacular coincidence for this week's finale when I locked myself out of the house for the first time ever. You literally couldn't write it - although I literally just have.

When I called the locksmith out and he said he could either drill the lock in (£125 and drastic, considering my housemate would be back in several hours) or attempt to pick it, I jumped at the latter. Needless to say the jovial, plump little polish locksmith had no luck even with my practiced and experienced supervision and we had to admit defeat. This all tells me two things... One, our house is impenetrable and two, failure at picking locks is not such a bad thing.

Next week I shall learn and perform a song using wine glasses.

Week Off

I have to confess that this week I have failed to carry out a task. This is mainly as I was working in order to replenish some of the funds which is an unfortunate necessity in life. I went back up to my old stomping ground in Yorkshire and I actually thoroughly enjoyed it, got to see some old faces and there is promise of further work. Good times.

In other news, I hit Cardiff where I saw another set of old faces and took part in fairly aggressive go karting session. The large crash that occurred in our final session, I still maintain, was not my fault.

So, that's about it. I did see George Alaguya (BBC News presenter) in Westfield today which was pretty exciting but I think this week's task needs to make up for a taskless week. Therefore, I'm going to master lockpicking in just one week. Wish me luck and I'll leave you with my latest, albeit poor quality, evil face photograph.

Acting

Hello world. This week's task was a tad on the boring side, at least for those hearing about it. The aim was to learn about how websites are coded using html and css code and I actually found it pretty interesting. Quite some time was spent listening to fairly boring American accented chaps on youtube going on about stuff that was occasionally so complicated, I didn't believe that it was actually for real. Still, I have produced the site on the right from the bits and pieces that I picked up and just to prove how awesome I am, here is the coding that I had to type out from scratch. Well worth knowing about!
In other news, I was chilling out with James Corden and Julie walters this week. Those who don't know already (and I may have been going on about it quite a lot), I managed to bag some work as an extra. Chilling on set with the big guns was quality even though it was a film about Britain's Got Talent winner
Paul Potts. Hopefully my acting skills were noted and you'll probably be seeing me in the next Bond film.

The picture featured on the page by the way was from Gun Hill Riffs latest gig. Good fun it was too and thanks to all who came. Finally, I had wanted to get a more active task in for next week but I've landed some proper work which will be helping me pay for this year so it may have to be another smaller task. As such I'm going to leave this week's task as a surprise! Bet you can't wait. 

W

Times Tables

Well. The task for this week got off to a slow start. I won't lie, it's pretty difficult to get yourself motivated to learn your times tables. I tried various methods including printouts of the tables themselves, going down them in order but by far the saviour of this task was the times tables app I downloaded on my phone. Words cannot describe how addictive this is. It takes the form of a timed quiz and as a result of almost constant use over the last two days I am now well good.

When I say mastered it's all relative, exemplified by my mistake in challenging my father to take the test. He immediately beat my score and the gloating still rings in my ears.

In other news, our Halloween party occurred this past Saturday and a good time was had by all. I donned my Jedi outfit and in my opinion the force was with me.

It was also mindblowingly comfortable. This makes me think the record attempt for longest wearing of a Jedi outfit will be all the more easy.

Incidentally, I have recently had an increased number of people commenting on my likeness for a certain member of the Inbetweeners. Am I becoming him or something?! This is a photo of me...

This is the alleged lookalike (who unfortunately I must admit may have been the reason why a girl outside the BBC the other day looked over at me and barely managed to mask a massive grin (my flies were not wide open. I checked straight away))...

I think I look more like WWE wrestler The Miz...

I am not particularly pleased either way but that's life. Anyway, the tasks have been a bit bookish recently so I'm building up to an exciting one again once I have been boring for one more week. The task I shall be doing this week is learning about computers. Specifically html. I barely know what this is but I'm told once I know the basics I can pimp out my blog a bit. So the proof will be in the brand new look next week.

W

Bow Ties

Greetings. This week's task as you may well know was to learn how to tie a bow tie (with ease). The 'with ease' part is an ambiguous term but the proof of my newly acquired skill can be seen at the end so you can judge for yourselves. Either way, I am now fully equipped to attend formal events the way they should be attended.

I've been reasonably busy this week with various bits and bobs. First of all, Gun Hill Riffs wowed audiences again with our latest gig. More accurately, we played a short acoustic set to a sparse audience made up of  mostly 14 year old children at a hard rock club in Reading, in which someone had recently been stabbed. It was reasonable fun. We will move onto bigger and better things however, the next billed gig being at Southill Park in Bracknell again on the 8th November. Come along if you feel like it!

Secondly, I have made my first tentative steps towards learning the wonderful language of Spanish. Those who have even a slight knowledge of the Spanish language however, are discouraged from comments designed to elicit examples of my learning. It is early days and phrases such as 'Go on, say something in Spanish then' will not be allowed until I have given such behavior my blessing. In all honesty, I have so far only read the introduction to my 'Learn Spanish' book and nothing else.

More thoughts on my world record attempt. I am soon going to be donning my jedi outfit for a fancy dress party and it has been suggested that a good world record to beat (or indeed set) would be to wear the costume for as long as possible. We're talking at least a week. How feasible this would be I don't know but I think it's worth giving Guinness a ring to see if they're up for it. I'll keep you posted.

So that's me for this week. My task for the next week will be to learn my times tables properly  and up to a high number. My mathematical deftness is sadly lacking and I think it's about time I put it right. Until then, the following should act as a nice tie in.

W

Busy week

First of all, I dropped my ipod in the bath this week. It was fully submerged for around 2 to 3 seconds. Bottom line is, after an evening in the airing cupboard  contained within a Tupperware box full of rice, it revived and is now as good as new. Far from this being the main news of the week, I nevertheless thought that after 6 years and counting of exemplary service, my ipod deserves some recognition.

But to business. This week's task was to investigate phrase origins and had a great response from some of you, requesting investigation into several common phrases. Pretty interesting reading it was as well. For instance, the phrase 'to have a field day' developed from 18th century military exercise in fields, unsurprisingly. And the phrase 'with bated breath' is simply an adaptation from the original 'abated breath'. In other words to bring down, lower or depress your breathing in response to an exciting situation.

As was pointed out to me, a great deal of these phrases come from falconry - under the thumb, wrapped around your little finger and fed-up. But there are plenty of other ones. A selection of these are as follows...

Hang fire - Comes from when guns used gun powder to ignite the spark from the iron plate when a gun is fired. Sometimes, the powder didn't fully ignite straight away and could go off a few seconds later or sometimes even longer. This became known as 'hang fire'.

Bootleg - From when cowboys used to keep illicit materials such as guns and alcohol literally inside the long legs of their boots in the wild west.

Let the cat out of the bag - Shady origins for this one but the most widely recognised one refers to when people used to sell pigs. Crafty farmers would replace the pigs with cats in bags to act like a pig. Presumably the buyers, too stupid to look in the bag at the time would get home, looking forward to unwrapping their pig and would get a great surprise when a cat popped out.

Someone did ask me the origin of  'never pat a rabid dog on the head'. Now I'd never heard of this one but I looked it up dutifully. I couldn't find much, but to be honest with you, it's pretty self explanatory - don't pat a rabid dog on the head because it might bite you and you'll get rabies. That's just good advice.
 
Anyway in the process of   looking at these a special mention should go to William Shakespeare for making loads of stuff up. All of a sudden, sorry sight, good riddance, in a pickle (my personal favourite) and in stitches were all courtesy of the big man as were a few words... bandit, assassination, blanket, bump, scuffle and puking.

If he can simply make up words, I see no reason why I cannot. I have been trying to get my own word - frell - to stick in peoples' minds for many years now. It means 'fridge smell' and can be used as a verb, adjective and noun. (to frell, frelly and frell). Simply put, it refers to the unpleasant smell that builds up in fridges, causing innocent fridge items to become sullied, or frelled. Let's all start using it.

I'm aware that this is becoming quite an essay so to tie things up, a few little bits of news before I go. I have finally managed to secure residency in London. Moving into a nice house in West Acton before the week is out! Tremendous! Also I have joined the gym finally which is just as well because I've signed up to the Wokingham Half Marathon in February. I must be mental.

Big it up to Alan Davies by the way who was awesome on saturday. And one final plug... Gun Hill Riffs have a gig on the 21st October at Facebar in Reading. Tickets are £5. If anyone wants to come let me know!

Next week's task.. How to tie a bow tie.

W

Balloons!

 Hello! I've been making balloon animals. It's well fun. You may say that's not particularly productive but I would disagree. You never know when one of these might come in handy. Impromptu childrens' birthday parties etc....
Here are some of my masterpieces.

A poodle

 A monkey (Honestly the photo doesn't do it justice)

Not a lot else has been happening this week. I may well be moving to London finally though, maybe start of next week as long as all the reference and contract stuff can be sorted. It is my birthday tomorrow unfortunately which means I will be edging ever closer to 30. (I'll be 27). Off to see Alan Davies at the weekend so I'll review his show for those thinking of seeing him.

Other than that I'm going to getting a bit educational with my task this week and looking at the origins of common phrases. If there are any that you've ever wondered about then let me know and I'll look into it.

W

Interesting times

The past 7 days were kicked off, as expected, by the speed flat mating. A singularly odd experience.I'll take you through it. I was ushered into Sway Bar in Holborn by a bloke who I'm pretty sure was the lead singer from Elbow. He gave me a sticker on which I was instructed to write my name, budget and preferred area, then sent me in to look for people wearing 'flat available' stickers. To be honest, the caliber of the participants wasn't high - exemplified by the guy who had written that he wanted to live 'somewhere cool' on his sticker. Still, the beer was cheap and by the end I'd made some unexpected new friends that I would never have made in normal circumstances. Worth doing.

 The rest of my week has been spent variously eating out in Chelsea and getting expensive parking fines, more flat hunting (I'm getting closer) and discussing the theory of relativity at some length in the pub with my mate Tom. Personally I'm not convinced and some day I'll prove that time is in fact constant, time travel is not theoretically possible and Einstein was quite simply wrong.

Onto my weekly task. As you may or may not be aware, I set myself the task of learning how to broadly draw the political map of the world from memory. I also said this would include capitals. In retrospect this was an outrageous addition and as such, the capitals will have to wait for another week. As for the map, I've managed it. Good fun as well. Below is the video evidence should you not believe me.

Next week's task... balloon animals.
Until next time.
W

Back in the UK

Greetings. I am tanned (to a certain extent) and rested. I am also party to an extra stone of weight - or at least that's what it feels like. I need to join the Gym immediately.

Indeed, I have been living well in the last two weeks. I have also been working hard on my weekly task. I wasn't quite sure what it was going to be until I arrived in Menorca but it soon became clear. We stayed at a villa, and in that villa was a pool, and in that pool was a football. It quickly emerged that I and my colleague, fella by the name of Craig, could not rest until we had headed the ball back and forth at least 50 times in a row. A worthy and useful task you might say. Well you'd be right. The first two days we were sub-20 and things were looking bleak. But on the very last day it all came together. Here is the result.

As awesome as this was, we have to move on. In that vein, the task this week shall be more useful. By sunday I will have learnt how to draw the political map of the world by memory complete with capital cities. Expect video evidence.

In other news I am looking for a flat in London still. As such I have agreed to attend a speed flat mate event on wednesday night. I won't lie I am quite terrified at this prospect but it might be fun. Plus I am buoyed by the new-found positivity I have acquired from reading 'Yes man' on holiday. If you haven't read it I suggest you do.

Ps. I'll leave you with a new hobby of mine. I have developed something, which some of you may already be aware of - an 'evil face'. It's so evil, I have genuinely scared myself with it whilst practicing in the mirror. I have recently begun to highjack photos with it and plan on continuing to do so. See below for an example. 

Until next time.
W

More holidays

Well a lovely time was had by all in the Lake District. Without wishing to repeat myself, the place is pretty amazing. The reason for travelling there was of course the wedding of two friends which made it all the more enjoyable and I had the pleasure of performing a song at their service. All went reasonably smoothly!

We also climbed the highest peak in England - granted it's only the 13th highest peak in the British Isles but it was still an adventure and it helped to compensate for the vast amount of food and beer I have ingested in the past few days. I won't joke, the hog roast bun that I had at the wedding deserves several awards. As such, its succulent, dreamy, moist and downright tremendous aroma will stay with me quite possibly forever.

Only a short post today as I'm shortly boarding a flight to menorca for my second holiday in as many weeks. Don't even worry about that. I am aiming to complete one of the items from my list over the course of the next ten days so expect some update from this. Which one it will be however will have to remain a mystery until then. W

Holiday

I have arrived in Windermere this evening of Lake Windermere fame. Frankly, it's a lovely place - like a postcard - and has the feel of Cornwall to it but with more hills. I'm here for a wedding and it promises to be a cracking long weekend! We're off kayaking tomorrow morning and this brings me to an interesting subject.

Following the recent success of the olympics I have been pondering the best way for me to win a gold medal in the Rio olympics in four years time. Now this may seem far fetched, and nothing I am about to say makes it any less so. However, based on a number of factors I have decided the only way I can do this is to train myself to perfection in the 200m kayak sprint. This starts tomorrow. I'll let you know how it goes.

In further shocking news, my hair is now regular length. I cut it and I'd do it again. I have no regrets. None whatsoever. Especially since, as it was such a big occasion, I had it cut at a Toni and Guy establishment, where they washed it and let me sit in the back massage chair. It was well good.

Still no news on flats in London. Unfortunately I didn't get that last one but I'll keep trying. Once I'm back from my holidays I'll be looking more and also beginning to work through my weekly tasks. Not decided which one I'll start with yet but I have an additional task to add to the list. One week out of the next 50 or so will be dedicated to breaking a world record. If anyone can think of which one i should break then let me know. That Rowntree fruit pastille advert seems to suggest it's impossible to have a fruit pastille in your mouth without chewing it for any length of time. Maybe that's somewhere to start?

Until next time.

Making progress

So far, everything is proceeding as I had forseen it. To update, I have now moved back into my parents house for the interim - an experience in itself - and have begun to bring my plans into fruition. I was sorry to see the north disappear in my rear view mirror (or more accurately in the wing mirrors of the massive van I hired to transfer everything. Honestly it was awesome. Like riding down the M1 in a throne-like armchair.) But the north is now but a distant memory - although one that I sincerely hope will never be lost.

My band - Gun Hill Riffs - had their first gig this past sunday evening. A resounding success from all accounts. Stand by for some uploads of some of the songs. Most enjoyable it was too and hopefully it will be the first of many.

I am currently looking for a place in london, and went to see a couple of places last night. One place in Barnes (a considerable hotbed of poshness) looked an absolute steal, so fingers crossed my ever growing hair didn't put the potential flatmates off too much. My fingers are currently crossed.

Talking of which my hair is becoming more of an issue by the day. Do I grow it to rockstar length or do I cut it and return to looking half respectable again? I have just applied for a role as an extra in a feature film for september which specifically says 'no long hair' so maybe my subconscious knows something I don't.

These are the things that are occupying me currently. Expect more updates to follow now that things are starting to normalise.

W

New beginnings

It's reached the point in my stint up north where I have probably, all things being well, bought my last roll of bin bags and my last jar of marmite from northern retailers. That means that my days up here are numbered and I'm looking towards my journey back down south.

I'll be sorry to leave here, after all it really is a lovely place, cracking views from my window and great locals (pubs as well as people). But things have to move forwards and plans are already under way.

I've put together a band which will hopefully start gigging from August - Gun Hill Riffs. Look out for us! There'll be regular updates on songs and gigs in case anyone wants to come and support us. I'm on the look out for a place to kick back in London (maybe Fulham area) with some like minded people. Again, if anyone knows anything, let me know.

There is a list of things that I will be getting stuck into once everything is up and running entitled 'weekly tasks'. I shall be putting them into some sort of order in the near future so if there are any suggestions on things that I could be doing then please let me know!

Obviously I'm going to be hard pressed to, learn how to prepare for a marathon in a week. Some of these things may need a little investment and rest assured there will be regular updates on my successes and failures along the way. If they do dry up, it is entirely likely I will have broken my neck attempting a back flip.

Amongst the smaller items on this list are two or three larger goals which I will be working towards and concentrating on throughout the year...
1) Writing my novel (Some friends will become enemies and enemies will become firends)
2) As already mentioned, the band - Gun Hill Riffs
3) Learning Spanish (could be a tricky one)

So I'll leave it there for now.
Expect some more regular blogs from now on!

Ola