Fill-ins

Welcome to a cloudy but warm afternoon in South Manchester. The threat of rain is there but hopefully it will stay dry.

I’ve managed to nuke my own laptop, which is quite annoying. I don’t know what happened; I think it was a hardware fault. The good news is that I have retrieved everything I need off it and now I am piggybacking off Mrs PM’s superfast laptop. It is much better than my old one which, to be fair, was slowing down anyway.

Shall we dive in with some silly questions from Sunday Stealing? 

1.  I am currently obsessed with new music.

I am kind of old school and still buy CD’s because I like to actually own the music I am listening to rather than “borrowing” it from Spotify. I listen to Spotify but the main reason is to look for new CDs to buy. 

Here are two songs that I have particularly liked from recent purchases. The first is Zick Zack by German nutters Rammstein – a song about cosmetic surgery (In case you were wondering):

The second is Shattered Memories by Michał Łapaj, the keyboard player from one of my favourite bands, Riverside.

2.  Today I am happy because I am going out to meet some friends to play Junkyard Golf and have an Indian street food meal.

I’ve never played Junkyard Golf before but it has been recommended. Basically I think it just Crazy Golf but modernised. 

I also love Indian food and there are a lot of new “Street food” places opening up in the city. 

3.  The age I am is 59 and the age I feel is 21.

In my head I am still a stupid 21 year old but my old body sometimes makes me realise that I am not a kid any more. I don’t care; if you are young in your mind that is a positive thing, at least in my humble opinion.    

4.  My favourite place outside the UK is Hong Kong.

I’ve mentioned this a lot before but the city of Hong Kong is an incredible place where east meets west. I have spent well over a year of my life in the city and I intend to revisit the city again, hopefully in a year or two when we head out to Malaysia.

5.  Something I have been procrastinating is writing the novel.

I’ve made several attempts at writing a novel and finally I have a good idea that I can stick with. I won’t tell you what it is about but I think it is a good idea. I am improving since I went part time. I try to attack it on my extra day off but I have found myself doing other things instead. To be fair, I spent about an hour on it yesterday and plan to do so again this week. I am generally winning my war with procrastination these days thanks to turning everything into a habit and shaming myself with habit recording apps when I fail. Turning things into a habit consolidates everything in your head and it is a massive weapon in the war against procrastination.

6.  The last thing (big thing) I purchased was a tablet.

I have bought a Samsung tablet to use when travelling, now that the pandemic is over. It is great for watching movies on flights and entertaining myself on the days when we decide to be lazy on holiday. It has been very useful so far on my trips to Spain and Beligium.

7.  The thing I love most about my home is its location.

I live in a great little suburb of Manchester that has amazing travel links to and around the city and also has a lot of great pubs, restaurants and shops locally. I like the house itself of course but the location makes it really special.

8.  My most prized possession is my house.

Of all the things I own, I can’t think of anything better than the house I live in. 

9.  If I could be one age for the rest of my life, I would want to be 35.

I really enjoyed my life when I was in my mid to late 30’s. I still looked young and I was fit. At the time I was swimming and playing football regularly and I actually felt good within my own body. I still feel good now to be honest but I am aware of the limitations that age is starting to impose upon my creaking old physique. 

10.  My outlook on life is summed up by this song:

11.  If you want to annoy me, start praising the current British government.

There is nothing on this planet that annoys me more than politics and at the moment in the UK we are in the depths of despair. I appreciate that some external factors have contributed to this but in the past twelve years, our government has been to blame for the new depths to which we have sunk. I have to walk away these days rather than talk about it. I have friends who support them but we never ever talk politics. 

12.  I am completely defenceless when it comes to cats.

I love cats and we have had six in our house for the past twenty years. Our original two cats, Jasper and Poppy, were later joined by a cat that adopted us called Spike and then one we adopted called Liquorice who was a psychopath. Even though Liquorice turned our house upside down when she arrived, creating cat chaos, I simply couldn’t get rid of her. She was ferocious but actually liked me best of all. Those original four cats are sadly no longer with us and when our house was a cat free zone, the void was too much – so we now have two more called Ziggy and Star(dust). They wrap me round their little paws and I am their slave. I have no defence.

13. The bravest thing I’ve ever done was to climb the Sydney Harbour Bridge.

I am terrified of heights and Mrs PM persuaded me to go with her when we were in Sydney. It was the most traumatic three hours of my entire life. 

14. Something that keeps me awake at night is coffee and beer.

I rarely drink caffeinated beverages these days because of their negative affect on my sleep. Alcohol has a similar effect but nowhere near as bad. 

15. My favourite meal in the entire world is too difficult to tell you.

I love food and I have many favourite dishes, far too many to put into a list and rank. Sorry.