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