Just in case you didn't realise I was a massive geek

Perhaps the hollowest boast I ever made was when I once told someone totally deadpan that in 1999 I was the 9th best under 16 subbuteo player in the UK.
It's no lie, in my teen years I did play competitively at a time when most lads were on their Sony Playstation or equivalent. And for a while I was starting to get pretty good, I could play fairly fluid, although perhaps a better defender than I ever was as an attacker.
The only problem was that aside from a few friends I convinced to play too most people thought I was insane to wanna play. At the ripe old of 16 I decided perhaps it was time to retire (girls, college, a part-time weekend job etc) and spent very little time in the following few years thinking about it until I made that appalling earlier boast a few months ago. Something within me clicked and I started looking online as to whether people still played. To my utter disbelief just before Christmas I found out that a fella I beat when I was 14 was now the WORLD NUMBER 2! He lost in the final of last year's world championships to a Dutch bloke. (Since then he's slipped to number 9 in the world)
At the start of this year I made it my pledge (and I don't care how sad it makes me) to get back into my flicking groove and make 2009 my year of preparation to become the 2010 world champion.
However since then I have acquired a girlfriend and it's quite possible that there may be a few things that could well take priority over this quest. I've starting going to the odd meeting at a local club and intend to go to one or two tournaments this year. Maybe it's gonna take a little longer but the dream still lives on.

For the record it's not me in the photo but a lovely man called Tom Taylor from whom I recently bought a team of claret and blue Sureshots.

This week I have been mainly

Another week, another chance to self indulge.
If anything prompts you or takes your fancy, even better.



This week I was mostly listening to
The Gentlemen – Sending Cards
The new single from my soon-to-be interviewees. Their second album is out at the start of May and this is their first single from it. They're pushing a bit harder to break the mainstream this time.
Red – Innocence and Instinct
Considering how well it'd gone down in the US I decided it was probably a good idea I gave it a re-listen to see if I'd missed another tune for the Rock and Hard Place ... I hadn't.
Gomez – Bring It On
Deserved winners of the 1998 Mercury Music Prize.

This week I was mainly watching
Did Darwin Kill God
The Apprentice
FM
The top choice was done from the perspective of an evolution-believing Christian. Very interesting stuff. FM is a sitcom set in a radio station, on paper I should love it, on TV it's doing just about enough to keep me watching.

This week I was mainly reading
Libertas Insider libertasinsider.blogspot.com
Seventh Angel's myspace blog check out their entry for April 1st.

Other things of note from this week
Last weekend we went up to Leeds on the Friday evening for a Funeral For A Friend gig and to catch up with some friends. Saturday, on the way home we went via Huddersfield (it's where her indoors went to uni – a wee nostalgia trip was in order), Holmfirth (where Last of the Summer Wine was filmed ... obviously), the beautiful Woodhead Pass and Hadfield (the outside set of the League of Gentlemen). It was made even more fun when you factor in that she was still ill after having two days off sick. The steak and kidney pudding I had in Holmfirth was immense. The onion bhaji burger she had was equally tasty but not the best choice for a lady with a fragile tummy...
I also lost 1-0 in a game of subbuteo to the last winner of the Staffordshire Cup and a former England international. I'll mention more on my worrying relationship with little plastic men some other time.

Humour me

Goodness only knows what prompted me to start this but I guess it makes sense. Almost every day I'm inspired to write something but never know quite where to start. Well most days this is where I'm gonna start. Some days I might just write about something that inspired or tickled me, other days it could be the embryo of something I'd like to expand on some other time. In which case humour me.

As a rule I don't like blogs as they often bring out some worrying character traits: egotism, inflated-self worth, a filtering system that allows us to self-edit our lives to present it in the way you wished others would see you, introverted naval gazing and missives on topics that 101 other people would be better placed to comment ... and no doubt in a more eloquent way.

I'm sure I'll fall into each and every one of those pitfalls at some point. For starters 101 to the power of 101 people could have written the above paragraph far better than myself. Getting back on topic (not that there is a clear topic in this instance) I've felt the need to write for a decade or so now. I kept diaries during various parts of my life, I started writing sketches when I was 15 or 16 and still try to write them from time to time, I went though a poetry writing phase in 2001 and occasionally revisit it, I wrote a sitcom during a productive week in 2006 and keep meaning to rewrite it or start on a new idea, I wrote a short radio play a little while ago even but just ended up being a rather ham-fisted introverted way of getting a message across. My point is I keep writing bits and bobs and I doubt that desire will every go away.

I have a very strong faith and the temptation would be for me to try and convince you to believe the same as me. I have some Christian friends who see their blogs as a form of evangelism. I'll be frank: I wholeheartedly would love to see each and every one of you embrace the passion I have for my maker and have that same relationship with Him that I'm eternally thankful for but that is not the aim of my blog. There will be times when my faith is mentioned obviously, God is my biggest inspiration, but there will also be times when politics might inspire me or my love of comedy, my armchair rugby fan side might rear it's head or maybe one day I'll you about my subbuteo past...

Things interest and inspire me every day, it'd just be nice to write some of them down before I forget them. If they interest, inspire, encourage or tickle you then even better.