my life

Claudia and myself finally arrived in Portugal, although to me it looked more like a fifties style Vegas – Vegas mixed with Maplins. When we arrived it was pretty late (considering our flight was in the morning), it was nearly midnight so there wasn’t much food left.

The nice enough lady (dressed in a fetching soft-pink tabard) showed us the menu, which wasn’t the traditional sort of card menu, but actual food. Great for seeing exactly what the food looked like but not so good when the food you serve is shite. There was an American-style breakfast on offer, but everything just seemed… flat. Flat ham, flat cheese, and flat fried eggs. As it was nearly midnight she said there was a limited menu available – basically those 3 items and we could have the ones off the actual menu if we liked. She suggested that it wouldn’t taste too bad when we smothered the whole thing in brown sauce. It did taste really bad. Like cardboard smothered in brown sauce. It stuck in my throat in a nasty way!

Anyway, she said she would show us to our room now as she was clocking off soon. Claudi was still eating so I said that I would go and then come back and take her there.

Bad move: the room was miles away, literally. After passing all sorts of different areas with teggies playing fruit machines and old women with blue rinses we finally got to place which looked almost decent – albeit a little too ‘Vegas’ for my liking.

As soon as we got there, she said quickly “Okay, this is your room, if you have any problems, just let us know, byeeeee!”, and with that she disappeared.

No wonder. The place looked like a mixture between a 14th century King’s castle, Del Boy’s bedroom, and Las Vegas at Christmas time… just before the year 2000 mllennium celebrations! It was awful, all spangley, pink and in your face – and the beds weren’t even made, and when I felt them it seemed that people had been sleeping in then only recently, they were still warm. I wasn’t impressed at all.

With that a really freaky looking dog entered the room – it looked like a dog who had been photographed, screwed up in Photoshop, printed out and then made 3D again. Weird dog. The only thing I could do was take a picture on my phone of course, and the dog didn’t really seem to mind and almost posed for the shot. Until a fat woman came out of the room opposite and snatched the dog into her arms, and then tried to prize my phone out of my hand – bitch!

She struggled quite a lot and I thought I’d lost it at one point but managed to kick her (missing the dog!) and grabbing it back.

This place is a nightmare! I hope for our sake it improves a lot when we arrive tomorrow.

I didn’t write this, but I would like to share it…

Imagine for a minute that your bank credits your account each morning with £86,400. It doesn’t carry over a balance however. Every evening your bank deletes whatever part of the balance you never used during the day.

What would you do?

I imagine you would try and spend as much as you could, possibly draw out every penny! Every one of us has a bank account like this, but it’s not money we’re dealing with – it’s something much more valuable, it’s time.

Every morning, this ‘time bank account’ credits you with 86,400 seconds. Every night it writes off, completely, whatever of this amount you have failed to invest to good purpose. No balance is ever carried over, ever, and you’re allowed no overdraft.

If you fail to use your day’s allowance, the loss is yours. There is no going back. There is no spending against the tomorrow. You must live in the present on today’s funds. Invest it, so as to get from it the utmost in health, happiness, and success!

The clock is ticking. Make the most of today.

Friday 2nd Feb 2007: it’s my birthday today! It is also Groundhog Day.

I didn’t get much in the way of sleep last night; not because I was an excited little boy and just couldn’t wait until morning. No, it was for a ghostly reason. In Hull, we say that you should never tell a Friday night’s dream (“A Friday night’s dream on a Saturday told, is sure to come true, no matter how old.”), but this was a Thursday night so it’s all good…

My ghostly dream went a little like this: I was at a strange bridge somewhere, it was a very old iron bridge with large columns which rose up, but didn’t seem to attach to anything (meaning they weren’t much use in the general strengthening of the thing) … I was on this bridge taking pictures of people I know (but can’t quite remember who) with a digital camera. Thing was though, every time I took a picture of one or two people, the ghosts of several other people appeared in the shot when I looked at the tiny screen, posing for the camera with the people as if they were people.

Now, while this doesn’t sound too scary now, these posing ghosts were the source of much fear last night, and when I woke up from the dream I was terrified to the point of huddling under the duvet in case the ghosts were in our bedroom.

You wouldn’t think I was 29 today would you!