Welcome to a sunny spring day in South Manchester. Winter is still fighting though as I discovered on a walk on Thursday. Thankfully I was prepared for the worst because the weather forecast said “there may be rain”.
Let me tell you what I experienced.
It was sunny for the first ten minutes and then suddenly, from seemingly nowhere, the heavens opened and decided to hurl down hail. Not content with that, the wind picked up and threatened to destroy my brolly and even me. Ten minutes later, the hail turned to a deluge of rain and even though I had a coat and a terrified umbrella with me, it didn’t stop my jeans from getting drenched. And so it went on for the next six miles with freezing cold temperatures. That is, until two minutes from home, when the clouds disappeared and the sun came out raising the temperature again. I was in the house again remarking to Mrs PM that the weather was nice now, only to be proven wrong immediately as I looked out of the window and saw that the sun had vanished to be replaced by snow!
Such is spring in Manchester.
In other news, I was disheartened to hear that Chuck Norris has passed away. While he wasn’t the world’s greatest actor, I recall laughing at how dreadful “Walker, Texas Ranger” was, marvelling at the fight scene between him and Bruce Lee in “The Way of the Dragon”. More recently, I remember laughing loudly at the Chuck Norris jokes that flooded the internet for a long time. I even wrote a blog post it:
He even lampooned himself in Expendables 2 – enjoy the punchline:
Rest in Peace Chuck.
Shall we answer some silly questions from Sunday Stealing?
1. Is your phone Apple or Android? What about your laptop?
I used to have an iPod but when that died, so did my association with Apple.
My phone is Android because there is a lot more choice out there and I find them superior to iPhones. In fact in my experience, a lot of guys who work in IT prefer Android. I’m not saying that iPhones are bad; technically they are very good and of course led the wayat the dawn of the smartphone. I just think they are overpriced and not as good as Android phones. That’s my own personal opinion.
I have a Dell laptop running Windows 11. Bizarrely, I’ve heard good things about Mac laptops but in this case, I have always worked with Microsoft, making it easier to just hit the ground running when I have to get a new one.
2. Can you say "thank you" in more than one language?
Yes, I can. I can say “Thank you” in English, French (“Merci”), German (“Danke”), Spanish (“Gracias”), Russian (“Спасибо” pronounced “spasibo”), Portuguese (“obrigado”), Dutch (“Bedankt”), Mandarin (“謝謝”, pronounced “Xiexie”) and Japanese (“ありがとう” pronounced “Arigato”).
This doesn’t make me a total polyglot because apart from English, I can barely make myself understood in French, German and Spanish and struggle when people speak back to me. Some people say that I can barely speak English.
3. What do you draw when you doodle?
I don’t doodle now but I used to when I was working, particularly in tedious meetings, where doodling helped me to stay awake as the bullshit flowed around.
What did I draw?
I would either try to draw a man’s face and, if the meeting was particularly soul-destroying, that man would evolve into a vampire.
I would also occasionally draw cubes and cuboids, shading them in or trying to combine them into elaborate sculptures.
Before I finish, I have to say that I am terrible at drawing and if you were to see anything I attempted you would say something like “that’s good for a three-year old” or “wow – that chimp can actually vaguely draw!”.
4. Which do you enjoy more, Scrabble or bowling?
I assume you mean tenpin bowling as opposed to crown green bowling.
Either way, that’s a tough one. I am not very good at either type of bowling. I am also not very good at Scrabble.
On reflection, I would say that I probably enjoy Scrabble first, then tenpin bowling then crown green bowling. But I enjoy them all.
5. Can you juggle?
I can only juggle my hobbies in retirement. As for juggling balls and skittles, absolutely no chance. My hand/eye coordination is non-existent when it comes to such things.
6. Have you ever worn pyjamas in public?
Why would I ever even consider doing that?
7. Was your best subject in school the one you enjoyed the most?
That would be maths (dearest American readers – note the “s”). I seem to be quite gifted when it comes to all things mathematical and I flew through my “O-level”, “AO-Level” and “A-Level” passing all three of them with the top grade (in the UK that is an “A”).
At university, I had to take several maths courses as part of my Computational and Statistical Science degree and that is when I started to find it tricky. Because I entered university with such good exam results, they put me in with the top mathematics graduates and I found it very taxing (although I still managed to pass the exams). Thankfully in my final year, I managed to ditch all mathematics modules to concentrate on the Computer Science and Statistics exams.
Before then, at school, I was such a nerd that I used to do past exam papers for fun.
WHAT A GEEK I WAS (and probably still am).
8. When you're offered the senior discount before you ask for it, are you offended or grateful?
I have never been offered a senior discount before asking for it, even though I am in some cases a senior. In the UK, my pension age is 67 so I won’t get the state pension until then (I have about three and a half years to wait). But such is the weirdness of the UK sometimes, that I can often get a discount for being over 60.
The big problem is that I don’t actually look my age and people look at me and question how old I really am. I have suffered this from the age of 18 when I wanted to buy a beer or get into an 18 certificate movie (rated R in the US) but was refused. Back then we didn’t have official ID cards (we still don’t - I use my driver's licence) so I was wrongly refused – even when I was as old as my early 20’s. I didn’t learn to drive until I was 23 so as soon as I got my driver’s license things changed.
The last time I was asked my age in a pub was when I was 30 years old. The barmaid, who was clearly younger than me, said “I think you are over 18 but I just thought I would check. Are you over 18?” I laughed and said “Yes! I’m 30!”. “OH MY GOD!” she said, laughing. “You’re way older than I am.”
These days, I have my driver’s license with me all the time so I can get discount tickets for things like the cinema quite easily. I really should ask Mr Google or Mr ChatGPT to find out what I can actually get a discount for. I might save money.
9. Do you agree that with age comes wisdom?
Absolutely. The reason is that we all learn from our mistakes and I have made so many in my life that I have lost count of them. This puts me (and others like me) in the enviable position that I can judge situations based on earlier mistakes I have made and advise youngsters based on my own experience and things I have struggled with.
I still make mistakes and I am still learning so it is an ongoing process even at my age.
10. Do you consider Sunday the first day of the week or the last day of the weekend?
When I was working, I considered Sunday as the last day of the weekend because, for me, the week started in anger on Monday.
Now that I have retired, every day is like Saturday, so I am happy to consider Sunday to be the first Saturday of the week.
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