Sellotape, space and Goldfish bowls.

So Tim Peake has headed off into space and I can't help but think that it should have been me.

I always fancied the idea of being an astronaut, to be able to view Earth as a globe must be amazing. If I had made a couple of different life choices it could be me up there now. Just minor changes in the decisions I made such as; studying Engineering instead of Psychology, learning to fly a plane instead of buying a house and joining the services instead of working in civilian street. So as you can see it could so easily have been me heading off into space. Of course I'd have also needed different eyes as astronauts are required to have excellent eyesight, I'd need to be a lot fitter and be about twenty years younger. Infact Tim and my almost parallel lives can be summed up perfectly in the words of John Bradford,

" There but for the grace of God go I".

So instead of heading off into space, this week I have mostly been wrapping presents. I have bought this brilliant new sellotape dispenser that fits onto the back of my hand. This means that you can cut the sticky tape one handed, essential when one hand is busy trying to hold the wrapping paper together. Earlier in the week, before I had the dispenser,  I instead cut lots of strips of sellotape and stuck them onto the edge of the coffee table. Then it was just a matter of trying to unstick the tape from the table edge, pulling it off Billy dogs ears, which just happen to be the same height as the table and trying to pull the tape apart when it curls back on itself. Now that I have my amazing new dispenser wrapping presents is a sinch, especially as the wrapping paper I've bought has lines on the back so I don't even struggle to cut straight lines. The only difficulty I have now is that Billy insists on "helping" by sitting in the middle of each piece of paper that I cut.

So OK I haven't gone into space this week and don't get to look out of my rocket window to see the Earth as a sphere. And I won't be a national hero, with the media tracking my progress, but I'm not bitter.  At least I don't have to go to work with a goldfish bowl on my head; my name doesn't sound like a 90's TV show (Tim Peake/Twin Peaks) and I won't be eating my Christmas dinner in tablet form. No I'm not jealous at all.

Reindeers, mince pies and the tooth fairy

Dear Wendy,

Thank you for your letter dated 2nd December. It is a long time since you last contacted me, about 40 years in fact! Your handwritting hasn't improved! I hope that the years have been kind to you.

I can confirm that you have in fact evaded the naughty list again this year, but I should point out that it was by the skin of your teeth. Each year you seem to get a bit naughtier and you really are skating on thin ice now. You have been warned!

I wanted to reply to you in person as there may be a slight problem with a couple of the items on your Christmas list and I don't want you to be disappointed on Christmas morning. As you say in your letter, the festive period does get more and more commercialised each year, but I'd like to point out that it's easier for me to get actual material things compared to your requests. Let me go through your list point by point.

• World peace, end of famine and cure for cancer. There's good news and bad news on these items. Let me start with the good news; I'm very pleased to say that we already have the ability, science and natural resources to achieve all of these lofty aims. The bad news unfortunately is that mankind has chosen at this time to use its resources to instead fund warfare, so peace, food for all and medical break throughs are all currently on the back burner. 
• A self cleaning dog. I do feel for you on this one as it's not just little white dogs who are hard to keep clean. The reindeers winter coats are a nightmare to keep muck free and I swear that the hollow fibres of their coats are dirt magnets. Mrs Santa and I are busy from Boxing Day till about April trying to get the chimney soot out of their undercoats. I can however recommend a good whitening shampoo (I know its good as I use it on my beard occasionally. Ho ho ho.)
• To win at games. A tricky wish to grant this one as if I were to grant it, you would be cheating and as a cheat you would have to go on the naughty list and not get any presents. Therefore I think you're just going to have to do your best to win by skill and luck like everyone else, you'll have more fun that way too.
• Good weather. Slightly outside my remit this one but I've had a word with a higher authority ie. the Met Office and we're on the case, you might want to keep your wellies and a waterproof handy though, just in case.
• A year of sleeping soundly. A good nights sleep is certainly a gift and I'd like to therefore give you an early present by telling you how to improve your sleep. Mrs Santa and I have a rule that we don't take phones, tablets, IPads etc to bed with us. Since we've started this we sleep much better. The wife also insists that we don't have any caffeine after 7:00pm, we have a milky drink at 9:00 and have sprigs of lavender under our pillow. What the lavender is there for, except to get tangled in my beard, I've no idea, but hey ho it helps to keep the elves busy in the summer harvesting the lavender.
• Enjoyment of tinned oily fish. I'm working on this one for you, hopefully by this time next year you'll be eating much more oily fish. I'm afraid that I don't have any fish recipes for you as we pretty much eat roast turkey all year round here, except on Christmas Eve when I have to eat approximately  six metric tonnes of mince pies.
• A red and blue box kite. I feel almost sure that I've delivered one of these to you before, however at this time of year I'm just too busy to look back through the archives and I've only had the current database for the last 8 years. Perhaps you could double check if you already have such a kite.

As you see I'm having a bit of difficulty with your list, so if you'd like to rethink your requests please let me know. Although you thought that you were being good by not being materialistic, you have made my job just a bit more difficult. Just a thought but have you ever considered asking for a set of ghd hair straighteners, my wife Mary swears by them and, no offence, but you look like you might benefit from them?

You also asked about how I got the job as Santa in the first place. Well I left school and got an apprenticeship with the Royal Mail. Whilst doing my training I spent some time as a postman, I also worked in the sorting office and central operations. Eventually I got a promotion into international projects, the experience I gained there was what I needed on my CV to apply for the job with Santas Deliveries PLC. Of course the fact that my Aunt is the Tooth Fairy and my second cousin on my mothers side is a Leprechaun probably helped too, we all know its not what you know, it's who you know that's important. I guess for young people interested in a job these days as Father/Mother Christmas then the more obvious route would be to take a degree in Logistics, like the one that Aston University offer and where I occasionally guest lecture.

So anyway must go, busy, busy.

Be good!

Love, Santa

Santa, oily fish and kites

Dear Santa,

There are already two windows open on my advent calendar and only 23 sleeps left till Christmas so I thought that I better send you my Christmas list as I don't want another mishap, like the year I forgot to send my list and you gave me a very unwelcome shoe cleaning set! 

I'm sure that you, of all people, will agree that Christmas is getting more and more commercialised and I expect that this has seen an increase in your workload, so I'll make this years list less materialistic than previous years.

First I'd like to point out that I have in fact been very good this year, so do deserve a present. I may have had a couple of minor misdemeanors such as the time I shaved Billy dog, borrowed veg from Mums garden, flashed a fisherman and stole five pence of petrol, but no one was harmed and I've done loads more good things, none of which exactly spring to mind.

So this Christmas I would like:

• I know it's a cliché but the first item on my list is of course world peace, the end of famine and a cure for cancer.
• A self cleaning spray for Billy dog. White dogs might look cute but they're the devil to keep clean.
• To win at least one game over the festive season. My family and I love to play games but are all super competitive, so I'd love to win at least one game, ideally more.
• Some good weather over the holidays. I'm not expecting balmy sunshine but some cold, bright and frosty days would be lovely. A light dusting of snow on Christmas morning would of course be perfect.
• A year of good sleep. I don't always sleep very well so I'd love to get a guaranteed seven hours a night to recharge my batteries.
• I'd like to be able to enjoy tinned oily fish more. I know they are very good for me but just don't like them. I eat tinned tuna but unfortunately it doesn't have the same health benefits as sardines, pilchards or mackerel.
• If you're struggling with any of the above then could I please have a red and blue box kite instead.

I was also wondering if you've got time, if you could answer a couple of questions for me. As someone who works as a Careers Adviser, I was wondering how you got into your line of work? Wish Fulfillment must be a hugely competitive job area to get into and it's always interesting to hear about peoples career journeys so that I can pass accurate information onto the young people that I work with.

So good luck with this busy time of year Santa and please pass on my best wishes to the reindeer and elves.

Thanks in anticipation,

Love Wendy.

P's There's still no mobile signal and dodgy Sat Nav in Porthtowan so you may need to bring your street atlas.

Stir up Sunday, soya sauce and shopping

Well Christmas is definitely on its way; stir up Sunday has been and gone, I've baked my Christmas cake and the shops are bedecked with festive goods. I'm well on the way with my Christmas shopping  but for those of you who are still searching for that elusive present for a hard to please friend or relative I may well have the perfect solution.

You see I have invented a new game which I hope that I'll have time to get patented and onto the shelves of all good toy shops in time for Christmas. This blog is by way of market research, so I'd love to hear what you think of it.

The game is called "Where on earth have I parked the car?". Like all good games its quite a simple premise but should afford hours of entertainment. All you really need to play is a car and a supermarket, complete with carpark. The rules are simple, it can be played by one to five players (perhaps more if your car seats more people). You park your car in the large, crowded carpark and head into the store congratulating yourself that you've remembered to bring your shopping bags.

At the entrance of the store you have a tousle with the coin operated trolley and then head in to start your shopping. It's best if you have written a detailed shopping list, which you then leave at home so that you have to wander up and down each aisle in the hope that the things you need will catch your eye or in a perfect world leap off the shelf into your trolley. Ideally you have gone shopping at a time when the store is busy with other shoppers who don't give a fig for shopping etiquette ie they leave their trolley in the most inconvenient place possible, let their children push the trolley right into your unsuspecting calves and stand chatting to friends and blocking the aisle, completely unaware that anyone else in the world needs tea bags or soya sauce.

Trolley laden, you make it to the tills and select the one with the shortest queue, only to find you're being served by shop assistant of the month, who won this accolade by being especially chatty. Don't get me wrong, its good to be served by a friendly face but I don't feel the need to discuss every purchase I've made, yes the wine does look nice and yes we all do deserve a treat, now hand it over!

Eventually goods paid for, the game starts properly because as you head for the exit, hobbling slightly from your bruised shins, you will find that you have no recollection of where you parked your car. The ordeal of trying to remember what you need, playing dodgems with fellow shoppers and being rammed painfully by a large trolley inexpertly driven by a small child, not to mention discussing the cold weather with Miss Conviviality at the till, has induced a state of shopping amnesia and you now have no idea where your car is. You wander off hopefully in one direction only to find that although it's the right colour car, it's the wrong make. You do a u turn and search in another row of cars to no avail. You walk up and down the carpark and are just starting to wonder if your car has been stolen when you realise the car you are standing next to is indeed yours.

The winner of the game is the person who takes the longest to find their car. There are of course bonus points if it's raining, if you're in a hurry and late for something, if you have a white car and if you get home and realise that you've forgotten the one item you went out for. The beautifully presented game will contain, a stop watch with which to time your search, details of the complicated scoring system and score sheets so that you can compare times for previous shops. There could even be online groups where you could see how your time compares to other people.

So what do you think, surely it's destined to be this Christmases must have gift? I wonder if I should be pitching it to The Dragons Den? Let me know if you'd like to reserve one of these highly sought after games but I should point out that due to the high demand I may have to limit purchases to one per household, terms and conditions apply.

France, chicken soup and the common cold

This week I felt that I should write something deep and meaningful about terrorism, but where to start. I don't want to live in a world where human life is used to make a political or a religious point, where a tiny minorities actions can cause distrust and intolerance amongst cultures who previously had lived together harmoniously and where a small group of people can seemingly start a war. So although I am not ignoring the events in Paris I don't feel that I can write about it, I just don't have the words.

So let me tell you instead about my attempt to make chicken noodle soup.

I've had a cold and a cough this week and spent some time looking online for home cures. I didn't fancy a salt water gargle or chewing on a raw garlic clove and I really couldn't imagine how a mustard footbath was going to help, but a reoccurring remedy I kept reading about was chicken soup so I decided to give it a go. It took me the best part of the day on Monday to make and filled my house with savoury aromas.

First I brought a couple of pounds of chicken, a carrot, an onion, a leek and some water up to the boil. I then simmered it for two hour, skimmining the scum off the top every fifteen minutes or so. Next I took the chicken out, took the meat off the bones, put the bones back in the stock together with a paring of lemon, a slice of ginger and a handful of parsley stalks. This was boiled for an hour, strained and left to go cold.

When chilled I removed the fat from the stock and then reheated it. I seasoned it, added finely chopped carrot and leek and cooked it for a couple of minutes. Next I added the noodles and brought back to the boil, then finally added the chicken meat back in to reheat and some chopped parsley.

A lot of love, effort, time, care and attention went into making that soup. I don't really like touching raw meat but had laboriously skinned the chicken portions, ignoring how squeamish it made me feel. I had cut the veg into perfect tiny dice, I'd even pealed the carrot for goodness sake. Despite my cold and blocked nose even I could smell the wonderfully comforting aromour and Billy dog was salivating so much I was practically paddling in puddles of his drool. So after spending seven hours labouring over a hot stove, making my kitchen into a chicken scented steam room and driving Billy dog into a feeding frenzy, what did I eventually end up with and did it cure my cold?

The results of my cooking was a steaming bowlful of golden broth, floating with jewels of veg, parsley and noodles. It looked perfect, better than the recipe picture in fact, and it tasted like a steaming bowlful of hot water. Yes you read correctly, hot water with no flavour at all. I think that all the chicken taste had evaporated into steam and was now clinging to my soft furnishings, I would probably have got more flavour out of my rug and curtains than from the actual soup. Talk about an anticlimax, I had put in all that effort to effectively boil a kettle. I adjusted the seasoning and now had a steaming bowlful of salty water. And my cold? Would someone mind going to the chemists and picking me up some Lemsips please? Aitchoo!

I really wanted to end up with a steaming bowl of deliciousness instead of my watery imposter. A bowl created from a disparate group of ingredients, all coming together in a yummy combination, each ingredient complimenting the other. So this week I have learnt that things it don't always work out the way that you want; my soup was tasteless and France and the world are in mourning. Was it the recipes fault, the ingredients fault or had I done something wrong? Please let's not look for blame, judge by appearance or give up on soup, I'm convinced there's a bowl of perfection out there somewhere, we've just got to keep practising making it. Also we need to remember that there is more good soup out there than bad. Now does anyone know how to remove the smell of chicken from curtains?

Routine, porridge and Shakespeare.

I'm not a person who is big into routine and order but there is one routine that I like to follow religiously; a routine that if I stick to it, ensures that my day runs smoothly and productively, but that if it goes awry heralds hours of chaos and disaster. It's my morning routine.

It starts just before six, when I wake and initially panic, thinking that I've overslept. A glance at the clock reassures me that all is on track. I lie in bed planning my day until six when the alarm goes off, then downstairs to put porridge oats and sultanas in a bowl and to make a cup of tea which I take back to bed to drink whilst I read for half an hour. Then it's up, and into the kitchen where my bowl of oats sit waiting, I pour on the milk and then put the bowl into the microwave which I set for twenty minutes on defrost.

The next step is to put a coat and a pair of trousers on over my pyjamas and take Billy dog out for a walk. If the tide is in we walk on the green, and if it's out on the beach. By the time we get home the microwave has performed its magic and the porridge has cooled to the perfect temperature to eat. Goldilocks couldn't wish for better.

Breakfast eaten its time to shower, then upstairs again to get dressed. Next its back to the kitchen to make a sandwich for lunch and grab an apple from the fruit bowl. Finally its bathroom again to clean my teeth and then back upstairs to change as I will have invariably dribbled whitening toothpaste down my top and we all know how this marks your clothes.

Then at eight or thereabouts I'm ready to leave the house to drop Billy at my Mums for the day before I head to work. My routine works like clockwork and has taken years of adjustment and fine tuning to reach this meticulous standard. It's really only when something happens to disrupt this routine that I realise how important it is. Take the other morning for example.

I awoke in a panic, oh no I'd overslept and was late for work, glance at the clock and phew all was OK. Six am alarm, then up, kitchen, porridge oats, sultanas and tea. Back to bed and had picked up my book when there was an awful noise from next-door. First there was a series of loud thuds, then a scream and then a half dozen yelps.

I live in a terrace and the sound insulation between my neighbours and myself isn't great but I've never heard such a loud scary noise. Although I couldn't see what had happened I knew immediately what those noises meant. You see our houses are small so when they were built, in order to save space, the builders put in paddle staircases. For those of you who don't know what this is, its a steeply pitched flight of stairs where each rung is only big enough for one foot and which takes up a lot less space than a more conventional staircase. They make good use of space but are steep and tricky to get used to. The neighbours on my right are new, in fact so new that I hadn't even spoken to them yet and I suspected that they still weren't completely used to the staircase. The noises that I'd heard, were I was sure, the sounds of someone falling down the stairs.

I lay in bed for a minute wondering what to do. Should I go and check that they were OK and run the risk of getting the reputation for being a nosy neighbour or should I drink my tea and read my book and let them sort it out? My mind replayed the sickening thuds and crashes and knew I had to check that all was OK. So trousers and jacket on over my pyjamas, I went next-door and knocked on the door. The door was flung open by a young woman wearing only a pair of pants.

"Help me" she cried " my boyfriend has fallen down the stairs!". She was already on the phone to the ambulance service.

So long story short, the boyfriend was lieing curled up in a foetal position at the foot of the stairs, wearing boxer shorts (have these people not heard of pyjamas?). He was conscious but said that he'd hit his head and hurt his neck and shoulder in the fall. His girlfriend was frantic and kept wanting to hold his hand, put a pillow under his head and wanted him to try and move his feet and legs. It took the ambulance about fifteen to twenty minutes to arrive and they seemed like the longest twenty minutes of my life. I'm not really designed to deal with crisis situations and felt like a cross between an iceberg and a swan: I was calm on the surface but seven eighths of me was below the icy water paddling in a frenzied way that felt horribly close to panic. I persuaded the girlfriend to get dressed and get her bag and phone etc so that she could be ready to leave with the ambulance, anything to keep her busy and stop her from trying to touch or move him. I had very strange conversations with them both, what with him lieing on the floor and her running around topless. I tried to keep them talking to keep her calm and him conscious, I've forgotten the details of what we talked about but wouldn't be surprised if I asked what their first pets were, their favourite colours and if money was no object where they'd go for a dream holiday. I have never been so pleased to see blue flashing lights in my life and was happy to let the paramedics take charge.

Back home, my tea was getting cold and my precious morning routine was irretrievably ruined. This resulted in me setting the microwave incorrectly, so got back from my walk to find my porridge had boiled all over the microwave and I had to have muesli for breakfast, I left the house late so got snarled up in traffic, I forgot my diary which I find very unnerving and for the rest of the day every spare second I had I kept remembering the sound of the fall and the almost inhuman cries that followed and could picture that poor man lieing on the floor. A really rubbish day.

However it could have been so much worse, as it turned out that my neighbour was not seriously injured, he spent the day at hospital being checked out but was home that evening. He had hurt his elbow and was sore all over, but other than that fine. So that night I was happy and relived as I cleaned the cold congealed porridge out of the microwave. Yes my day hadn't started very well, but had ended OK. I had met my new neighbours, even if the circumstances hadn't been ideal and I had seen a lot more of them than is normal at a first meeting but they were both uninjured and seemed very pleasant, despite the lack of pyjamas, I had a sparkling clean microwave and they had bought me a lovely box of chocolates as a thank you. So in the words of the bard,

"All's well that ends well".

Petrol, Atticus Finch and Tescos

I'm sure I've heard that one is supposed to learn from mistakes; that the word mistake is in fact a Swahili one which when translated into English means lesson, actually I may have just made that bit up. But I'm sure that if you do something that you regret you should make changes so that you don't make the same mistake again.

Well not me, once I make a mistake it seems to establish a pattern of behaviour that I then keep repeating. I have now made the same mistake three times and am worried that this hat-trick means that this mistake has become a habit now. Admittedly the three errors have occurred over a twenty year time period, but a pattern is a pattern even if it happens over ten year cycles, the latest of which happened yesterday.

You see yesterday I knew that I was getting low on petrol, so headed to the petrol station. It was unusually busy so I had to queue for a free pump. Eventually my turn arrived and I filled the tank with unleaded, fastened the cap,  I grabbed my handbag and went into the kiosk to pay. As soon as I reached into my bag to get my purse out I realised my mistake. The purse was there OK, but without even looking I knew that it didn't contain my debit card. I knew this as I knew for sure that the card was in my pocket, in my jacket....at home. The same as had happened the other two occasions. I'd taken my card out with me the previous day and hadn't wanted to take my purse or bag so just slipped the card in my pocket. Seemed like a good idea at the time but not such a good idea when I realised that, although I had my purse, I couldnt pay for my petrol.

The first time I did it I was living in Surrey and explained to the cashier what I'd done and offered to leave my wallet at the garage whilst I nipped home to get my card. Luckily she agreed to this. If she'd have looked in the wallet the attendant would have found my kidney donor card and library card, so pretty good collateral, as although only offal a human kidney must be worth at least a tank of petrol. The second time, I had to fill out a form before I dashed off to get some money. Yesterday, I knew I had a twenty pound note in my purse, the only trouble was I'd taken thirty three pounds fifty six worth of petrol. As I queued I started to try and surreptitiously count out the coins I had to see if I had enough money. This plan failed when I managed to drop all my loose change over the floor. I crawled around trying to retrieve all the bits of shrapnel, no copper too small or insignificant to be searched for. It was nearly my turn at the till and by my rough reckoning I was only a few pence short. I wasn't yet at the front of the queue but already had everyone's attention.

I got to the till and with mounting shame and embarrassment explained my predicament to the cashier and in turn to the rest of the queue. I explained that I had some money with me and she kindly offered to count it for me. It's amazing how long it takes to count thirty three pounds out when thirteen pounds of it are loose change and when you are shrivelling up inside from humiliation and the queue of people behind you is getting longer and longer.

It turned out that I was just five pence short, five little pennies that spelt the difference between me being a law abiding citizen and a thief. Five pence that meant that instead of carrying on with my day I would instead have to go to the police station and the rest of the day would be spent trying to wash the ink off my hands after being finger printed. I was busy imagining myself playing a staring role on Crimewatch, my face plastered on western style Wanted posters and standing in court with Rumpole trying to defend my indefensible actions, being prosecuted by Atticus Finch and sentenced by Judge Dred. In fact I was so busy imagining the worst I barely heard the cashier telling me that she'd let me off the five pence. When her words did sink in I felt huge relief and gratitude, winning the lottery could not have felt any better. I stammered my thanks and slunk away, making the walk of shame back along the queue and across the garage forecourt.

So unfortunately I don't seem to learn from my mistakes and have become a serial offender. But once again the Porthtowan One walks free, all thanks to a very kind lady at Redruth Tescos petrol station, just goes to show, every little really does help.