The perfect spot

How close is too close?


I just had a minor train rage incident. Well I wouldn’t really call it rage, really it was more of a train humph incident – and it involved quite a lot of tutting.

The Frisbee four

“Left a bit, left, no left – I SAID LEFT”


It’s not my fault that we were going right though – I was trying my best. How many of you have attempted precision pedalo driving, while attempting to nonchalantly look like a normal tourist, rather than the leader of the ‘The Frisbee four’? The cover wasn’t exactly being helped by the two fishing nets being swung around by the two youngest members of the least subtle heist team, since a bunch of A-list celebrities thought that sticking not one, but both of the drills used to dig the channel tunnel under Vegas.

The Ginabean

Today’s Friday Fiction is all about Dang Gina, AKA The Ginabean. Those of you who read my Hilton eforea giveaway post, will know that I promised to write a story about the winner – so here it is. I’m sure you all know who Gina is, and that she writes over at http://www.theginabean2.blogspot.com/, well now you also know that she won. So here it is. At nearly 2000 words it is a little on the long side I admit, but I refuse to apologise for this as I was determined to put some real effort into hopefully proving that it was, after all, a prize worth winning. I just hope you can spare a little extra of your very valuable time to check it out, if you can then I thank you.


Gina – I hope you like it…

Is it possible to enjoy camping?

library footage of me smiling in our tent, while it was in our last home's garden

Dating and texting - the do's and don'ts

So the last time I went on a first date – texting wasn’t invented.

So what would I know about first date texting etiquette? 

Chances are I know absolutely nothing – but there is only one way to find out for sure, and that’s to ‘clink the link’ or ‘click the lick’ whichever…

Mornings don't always go to plan

http://www.handheldmuseum.com/MB/Simon.htm

Do you know how some mornings can go a bit pear shaped? Nothing massively importantly wrong, but just not how you’d imagined it going when you were lying in bed hitting the snooze button.

That’s what mine did this morning.

Firstly there was the milk. Nothing too dangerous about milk you might think, until you try giving it a shake AFTER you have unscrewed the lid.

Why?

Why would I do that? What is it that makes you do illogical things when you are still sleepy? So, I sat and ate my Cornflakes in a slightly wet shirt, thinking that by four O’clock this afternoon I’m going to be smelling of really stale milk. However, it’s only now, as I sit writing on the train approaching Reading station, that it has occurred to me that I could have just popped upstairs and put a clean shirt on!

Men!

And then there was my new laptop.

On Friday, just before going away for a long weekend (details to follow on a later post) I got a new laptop. Now I’ve never claimed to be the most PC & Internet savvy person in the world, but working my way around Windows 7 after what feels like a lifetime of XP, is like taking a hoop away from a 1930’s child and presenting him with a SIMON. It is alien and complicated and weird and wrong – but also wonderful and exciting and new. I can’t stop finding new things to log into, just so I can set up the fingerprint gadget – now THAT is the future!

However, this morning I flipped open the lid while eating breakfast, just to have a quick snoop at things, only to discover that when I had shut it down last night, I hadn’t spotted it was trying to load 28 bloody updates – WINDOWS!! So I’d closed the lid, which apparently is illegal or something, because it refused point blank to load them unless the lid was up. So I sat there for about three weeks, watching the clock tick by. When I finally got rebooted I realised that I was late, so without so much as a check on Facebook, I threw the laptop into my bag and left the house – into the rain.

Which meant I had to have my coat’s hood up, which distinctly impaired my peripheral vision.

Which meant I didn’t notice the man stood next to me giving me scared looks, while I walked along 

loudly chuntering “bloody stupid windows 7 making me miss my bloody train without even letting me bloody do any fingerprinting”, until after he rushed away shaking his head.

Never mind, so I’m late for work and stinking of milk – I still have my fingers so I can still have some fun, right?

Holding On

Flash fiction Friday


Well I said I was back, and that FF Friday would stay, so here we are. This weeks post is unprompted but sees the return of Poseidon, last seen in “Poseidon’s Hell”. His problems continue…

=======================================================================

Holding on

Poseidon frowned.

How could he be finding this so hard? He was a god for God’s – for his sake, humph, it is tough finding someone else to blame when you are a god.

But there are people to blame aren’t there? That cow Athena and her mates. That damned stupid poker game and whoever the hell it was that invented Sambuca.

They were to blame for this.

Oh and Mrs. Pilkington.

It was her stupid rule about guests not being allowed into the house for three hours every Wednesday afternoon, so that she can deep clean and tidy the place without “…you bunch of idiots bustling about under my feet!” as she had so delicately put it, that had left him here in this mess right now.

Yep – it was definitely her fault.

Poseidon hated Mrs. Pilkington.

The coldness seeped further into his numbed backside and he sighed. Slowly he reached up, grabbed the rail and pulled himself back to his feet. The wet patch on the seat of his trousers clung desperately to his pride and refused to let him have it back.

Oh he had seen ice before, of course he had. Great rolling oceans of ice had been at his very command – once. Poseidon had no fear of cold water, no fear of anything. Except failure.

Failure was not an option.

Yet here he was, for the third week on the trot, completely unable to let go of the side of Oxford’s cunningly disguised ice rink, with its hefty mast, and nautical look that had fooled him onto the ice in the first place. Poseidon’s sense of nostalgia for the good old days of the ocean, when sailors were properly respectful and the mermaids were easy, frequently got him into these scrapes.

What was the point of these stupid shoes? When he’d ridden the glaciers across Europe he had never slipped once – not once. His trusty polar bear boots had stood him firmly in his place, and it had felt good.

But these stupid things – what was the point? One long blade down the middle that you could chop a carrot on – utter madness! How was anyone supposed to walk on them?

And yet they were.

All around him people were walking very, very fast on them; and not just men either but women too, women who could easily see his discomfort. Babies! Literally, babies for crying out loud. One little creature just whizzed past him now, laughing and spinning as his Buzz Lightyear cape flapped mockingly past the god’s knees.

And still Poseidon stood there, fixed to the rail; unable to move.

In desperation, the great man closed his eyes tight and concentrated with a fierceness that should have sunk ships and created chaos. His ears buzzed, his fists gripped the wall so tightly he left finger marks, but no matter how much the god willed it the ice would not melt, and the Rapture did not fall upon the people of Oxford. All that happened was that he got a headache, and one small boy’s cape blew over his head, causing him to momentarily lose balance.

Poseidon’s head hit the rail as he silently cursed the whole of Oxford to Hades, before slowly, and with the determination only an immortal can embody, the huge man raised himself to his full height and turned away from the wall. With a grunt and a silent agreement that this would be the very last attempt, he pushed himself off and slid gracefully away from the edge of the rink and straight into the path of Jenny Fatass, a nurse from Abingdon.

They spun around a couple of times before landing in a crumpled heap on the ice.

Poseidon frowned.

Jenny frowned. Then she smiled.

Poseidon frowned; but not quite as much.

Is it time to give up blogging?

Hello, it’s me.

Or is it?

I’m having a bit of an identity problem here at Glen’s Life. I’m having a bit of a mid-blog crisis.

Before I went away on my family holiday last week, I was feeling low.

I was suffering from a lack of confidence. 

To be honest – I was beat. I was ready to quit.

Since I began pushing myself a little firmer into fiction (which is what I love doing the most) I’ve noticed, well to put it bluntly, that you lot don’t seem bothered.

I can’t really put my finger on the trouble but comments are just getting rarer and rarer, and that hurts.

It shouldn’t.

I know it shouldn’t – I can’t justify this next statement at all, but I’m about to say it anyway. You look on other people’s blogs and they write – “Hey I’m wearing jeans today” and within twenty minutes they have thirty comments saying how great wearing jeans is. Whereas I am putting a lot of effort in here, taking days to write stories or hours to write an article, pouring myself into the post, and then I fight for maybe one or two comments

It gets you down after a while, rocks your confidence. So, in a strop I spent 30 seconds downloading a picture of a cat and huffed off on holiday for a week.

My wife asked me why I was bothered about that – what was it that I was trying to do. Was I writing for comments or writing for me?

It was a good question – and one I couldn’t answer without contradicting myself. You see, I am of course writing for me, I love writing; I really kind of need it. But…but… Sometimes I wish people would comment – there I said it.

I write here, I write on In the Powder Room and I write on Real Bloggers United and do you know the one thing that is common between all three sites? Barely any comments, that’s what. 

Don’t get me wrong – lovely folk do comment here, and I am grateful for that. No one can read ALL blogs every day, so people come and go. I certainly get that as I can’t possibly read and comment on everyone every day – it’s impossible, I’m also guilty of missing commenting on blogs that I really ought to comment on. 

So I don’t want to sound like I expect miracles. I just had a bit of a confidence wobble that’s all. 

Maybe I’m a bit needy.

Here’s the thing…

I’m never going to be massively popular as a blogger because…

I don’t have a specific genre. Sometimes dad blogger (who refuses to post pictures of his kids) – sometimes husband blogger – sometimes silly – sometimes serious – sometimes social commentator – sometimes fiction writer  - how are readers supposed to know what to expect?

I’m not entirely consistent with quality either – I know this; I often make the mistake of thinking it is more important to post something, rather than post something good.

Some posts can be a bit long.

I’m not endowed with the biggest vocabulary in the land – As my wife has often pointed out, I don’t read enough. She is dead right about that. This is certainly something I have to sort out. But then what do I read? To work that out I need to work out exactly what I want to be, don’t I? My wife thinks I should be reading ‘proper’ books, and again she is right but that won’t help me be a blogger, but reading blogs won’t help me be an author, now will it? 

I can’t decide what I am – see above comment, what am I? What do I want to be?

I’m a little unpredictable on when I post. – Time and time again I hear that being regular with the time and days that you post is important, and time and time again I fail to manage it. Sorry.

There are more reasons, but they all point the fingers of blame in one direction, and one direction only.

Before I went away I was blaming you lot for my lack of comments – and I was absolutely fed up with it.

I was wrong.

The common link between those three arenas, isn’t the lack of comments, it’s me.

I have been doing a lot of thinking and soul searching and have come up with the following decision.

My lack of apparent blogging success isn’t your fault – it’s mine.

I’m not going to change just to solicit comments – but I am going to just keep on practising, improving evolving and learning.

You see, the reason my blog is so erratic in its content is because I’m erratic. This is who I am. Sometimes I’m a father, sometimes I’m a husband, sometimes I’m silly, sometimes I’m serious, sometimes I’m just a bloke, sometimes I want to make things up and write stories. If I knew exactly who I was, or who I wanted to be, then maybe I could reflect that consistency here. But I don’t. So I can’t. 

This blog is called Glen’s Life and that is EXACTLY what you get, warts and all – this place is an echo of the insecurities and over compensating confidence that my life revolves around. Sometimes the post might be a humorous version of an actual event, or it might be something that I’m thinking about doing, or it could just be something of my imagination. Some stuff gets held back, or exaggerated, or improved, but this is exactly how mixed up I am - The key thing is that I just have to get things out of my head and down on virtual paper, whether anyone else is interested or not. I love writing and want to consider myself a writer – either as a successful author, or a paid magazine writer or, dammit, just exactly as I am – a hobbyist blogger! Why not? If that’s all I am and I spend the rest of my time pootling along with a handful of readers spread out across the globe then so be it. At least I am writing – at least some people are reading.

And those few people that are reading are other writers; people who are usually much more successful at blogging than I am, and that is pretty cool.

By the way – if you are a non blogger and you are reading here regularly, please can you let me know? I’d get quite a thrill knowing that a reader was just exactly that – a reader!

As usual I have rambled on for far too long to hold anyone’s attention.

Sorry.

I just wanted to say that, after much consideration, I will be keeping the same basic content style here unchanged, even if that decision alone puts readers off (I’m not precious about this, but where else can I try things out if not on my own blog? If I was writing for other people, or if I was being paid, then I would make whatever changes were needed to make the editor happy, but right here, I’m the boss!) – I will try much, much harder at improving the quality though, and keep one aspect of consistency, which is Friday Fiction, which has to be posted on a Thursday when using the prompt from www.flashfictionfriday I’m afraid – because stories are the thing I enjoy writing most of all. Other days will continue to be a mix of lifestyle posts (my life).

Also, I’m going to try and read more – blogs AND books.

Comment / don’t comment – but please – please – read.

The Bell

Hello there - I'm posted up at Real Bloggers today.

would love you to go read all about...

Well, if I told you here you wouldn't need to go there would you?

Click here to go read --  thanks loads !

15th August 1998

Glen & Jo Staples

15^th August 1998

13 years and never an argument…  Well maybe one, or perhaps two – three at the most – hang on I’ll start again…

13 years and never an agreement.

Jo – I love you more now than I ever did.

I still fancy you too- not too hard when you look this hot though love xx

cute cat says what

http://iloveglee.glogster.com/cute-cats/

"What?"

The amazing Hilton eforea spa giveaway

My almost – so very nearly – but just not quite first sponsored post and absolutely my first ever giveaway…

I may have mentioned before that the building I work in is owned by a major magazine publishing company. Because of this, there are often promotions of some sort going on.

Yesterday I was returning from lunch with my colleague Rebecca, when we were stopped by a couple of promotions girls.

They asked if we wanted to come in and find out what Hilton Hotels is up to and receive a free drink, canapé and goodie bag.

Oh well – I guess we had a couple of minutes spare!

So we go into this little room that is all decked out in Hilton stuff, and full of very warmly smiling women. The promotion was for the somewhat impressive looking ‘eforea’ range at Hilton Hotels, which looks exactly like the kind of spa experience that my wife hopes to have an affair with someone rich enough to take her to.

Very quickly it became clear there had been a minor clerical error. What the girls outside had failed to do was to consider that we might not actually work for a magazine. They didn’t actually ask.

You see, we were supposed to like their product. We were supposed to know about their product, and then we were supposed to promote it. It didn’t take them long to realise that we had no idea what they were talking about, but just fancied a free cocktail.

So Rebecca and I walked around desperately trying to keep a straight face as we were told about the holistic journey that we could be going on with Hilton. We listened as they told us about their eforea experience, and the specially created and superbly effective products and treatments used to transform the weary traveller into relaxed bliss.

I nodded knowingly as I was told about how Aboriginal Elders had helped develop the spiritual focus for one range of products.

As the lady in charge began to realise who we were, things began to speed up.

The talks got shorter.

The route to the door did too.

We were given our canapé and cocktail – very nice.

Then came the really funny bit.

I saw the back room guy bring out two goodie bags.

I saw the lady at the door pick both bags up.

Then I saw the lady in charge take them off her, put one down and say “Can we just give you one bag to share?”

Yes, with hindsight I should have tried to argue it out. Maybe I could have made big noises about being some hugely successful blogger, and that I’d give them more exposure than Marie Claire ever could – but no. I looked down, grabbed the bag and ran.

So we legged it to the lift and laughed. Then we split up the goods, and I quickly realised I’d have to write about it.

Which brings me to the exciting bit.

My first ever giveaway.

Here is how you play: You have already seen the photo I took of the stash of freebies yes? Looks good? – Right well read on…

Study this next photo. Here I am displaying the very masculine VITAMAN face moisturiser – with its lovely creamy texture and oh so manly smell.

This stuff is so potent that it sets to work on all your defects immediately – which I decided to test.

In order to be scientific, I applied the moisturiser to one half of my face only, and left the other half to fend for its self.

All you have to do is this:

1. Tell me which half (left or right as per your perspective) has been treated by the wonder cream.

Essentially, which half of my face can get work as a model?

2. Study the picture again and guess exactly how long it took the promotions lady to realise that I had no idea what male grooming was, but thought it might get me put in jail – and therefore began to lose interest. I’ll take the closest guess to the point where she stopped herself half way through a sentence about “eyes and lips in one easy to use bottle” and just sighed “anyway….”

Leave me a comment with your answer, ensuring I can access an email address.

Tweet a link for an extra guess and Facebook for another – you know the routine. I will put all the correctly answering names into a random selection process, commonly known as pointing at the screen with my eyes shut, and the lucky commenter gets the prize.

The Prize.

I discussed at length with my Wife which items from the stash should go as the prize, and Jo pointed out that Hilton never actually gave me permission to give these away, and so - as she very quickly hid absolutely everything into her lotions and potions cabinet - I realised that the only thing left to giveaway was the VITAMAN man cream.

And unfortunately I’ve already been using that.

So the winner of the first ever Glen’s Life Hilton Hotels eforea spa Journey giveaway will receive their very own personalised email from me saying “Hello _____, well done for winning. ” AND one free tweet AND one free Facebook ‘Like’ AND I’ll even give you a FREE mention right here on Glen’s Life, where 6 or 7 people who already read your blog are likely to see it.

Oh - and I’ll write a Friday Flash Fiction story all about you.

I can’t say fairer than that now can I?

Surely being the star of a Glen’s Life FF story is better than a free tube of posh baby oil?

P.S.. Just because you are the star of the story – it doesn’t necessarily mean you'll be the good guy, or mean that you’ll live to the end of it – just saying!

P.P.S. When I excitedly phoned my wife to tell her all about my experience, and the free stash of products she was in line to receive – do you know what the only thing she said was?

“Who the f**k’s Rebecca?”

Take your vagina home -- but before you go...

I couldn’t stop myself. I just couldn’t.

When I read this article by Slappyintheface, over at In the Powder Room, I just couldn’t NOT stick my ore in.

She implied – unbelievably – that  while she was cleaning up cat sick was actually NOT the best time to grab her from behind and say “Hey baby, want some action?”. I know, it sounds ridiculous but there you are.

Her post suggested that she was fed up with all this unwanted and mis-timed attention, rather than turned on, and that she was going to ‘taker her vagina and go home’

Well, fair enough love, take it – but before you go…

My response can be read here.

Thanks Bernie

What does she see in the multi millionaire short arsed git

I’m guessing that there are literally dozens of sports that get shown on TV around the World. 

I can name three for a start. I’m fairly certain that there might be some others too.

Out of all these sports, there is only one that I’m interested in watching; only one that I care about or know about.

There is only one sport that I make a point of watching, that I ask my family to accept as being sacred. I don’t demand a lot of TV time, except for every other Sunday for half a year.

Formula 1 - The Grand Prix.

This is my sport. This is the only one I care about and I absolutely love it. Watching the race is my one real TV indulgence. What I mean by that is that I am pretty much the only person in the house that wants to watch it, but it goes on anyway – no discussion. I do this for no other sport or program.

Not that I’m completely selfish about it. I’m not manic about watching it live. If we are doing something as a family then that comes first. We do the family thing, I record the action and desperately avoid listening to the radio, checking out Facebook, or talking to any one who might know the result. I’m not precious about it, but at some point on the Sunday it is getting watched. You can’t leave it any later because you WILL find out the result.

And now Mr. Bernie Ecclestone has pulled a blinder.

In his ever increasing need for bringing in ridiculous amounts of money, he has made it impossible for normal channels to bid for it.

British commercial channels can’t afford it.

The BBC can no longer afford it.

So next year it is going to Sky, and they are going to charge people to watch it.

For no other reason than because they can.

For the first time ever (or at least for the first time since they started showing it), the Grand Prix will not be shown on British terrestrial TV. For the first time in my memory, I am not going to be able to watch it.

I cannot justify the cost of Sky Sports every month, just so I can watch one program once a fortnight for not even a full year.

I’d watch absolutely nothing else on that channel.

It won’t even be just one channel either; oh no they have that one covered. When you get Sky Sports you have a choice to either get the slightly cheaper package or the full price one. The cheaper package lets you have half of the sports channels on offer. If they only showed the racing on one channel then I could maybe justify getting the half package. They won’t do that though. They will alternate the channel that it is on. One week it will be on a channel on one side of the divide, and the next it will be on the other. You will need to have the full, expensive package to watch my F1.

Gutted. 

The BBC has tried. They cut a deal (that cost a lot of money) that enables them to show about 10 races live and the rest they can show the highlights for.

Highlights? Have you ever tried to watch a highlights show? I hate it, the action just doesn’t make sense. But highlights are what I’m going to have to resign myself to watching from now on.

Thanks Bernie.

You have just taken away my only sport.

What exercise will I get now?

Photo: http://bleacherreport.com