People who's opinions are defined by others.

Everybody has a mind, it's a freebie, get born, get a free mind that you can use to make decisions. It's an easy thing to use, every time you need it it's there, helpfully reminding you to remove the hand you've inadvertently laid in a fire because it hurts, giving you the heads up that the feeling of emptiness in your tummy means you're hungry and letting you decide what pleases or disgusts you, all by yourself. So why is it that there are people around who seem to have their opinions dictated to them from the people around them? Is their mind so weak that it can be dominated by  others on every occasion? Is it the case that they have lost the ability to listen to their own opinions? God knows.

Think about it. You listen to some music, your brain will fairly rapidly inform you wether you are a) enjoying it, this is GROO-VEEE, b) it's doing nothing for you, I mean you don't want to vomit or anything, but you wont care if you ever hear it again, or c) this noise is horrible, it makes me want to tear of  my ears and swallow them lest I hear it again and subsequently go out find the men/women who perpetrated this aural crime and kill them, slowly and painfully. This same simple decision process happens a billion times a day to every one of us... It works with people, smells, tastes, sounds, sensations, situations, in fact everything that happens will form some kind of opinion in your mind that lets you know wether you want it to happen again. It happens subconsciously. You don't even have to think about it and it goes on all the time. So, how can you not pay attention to it? How can you override it, suppress it, ignore it or disregard it to the point where your own tastes cease to matter and those of the people around you inform your entire view of the world? You must be entirely stupid or weak in order for it to happen.

So, there are people I know who claim to be fans of The Kings of Leon, Metallica and Beyonce. Somewhat possible, yes but nearly everyone I know who likes the first two may well think the latter is a visual treat (I don't) but would rather die than listen to her, and of course the other way round does too. I have friends who claim to be socialist, yet think that Boris and Cameron are the best next step for the country. I have many friends who display this dichotomy of opinion and they all have one thing in common, the fact that they have very little will power and strongly opinionated friends (of which I am one) who it seems they must follow or die. It's quite hard to cope with these people. I would far rather have someone with a view of their own, wether I agree with it or not, than a namby pamby yes person. A lively disagreement is as much fun as a sharing of the same view with someone as passionate about the subject as you. What isn't fun is the humming agreement of the non opinioned. 

Please people, tell me what you really think, not what you think I want to hear.

The Holiday Inn Shower situation...

The shower in room 233 at the Holiday Inn, Swindon is quite possibly the worst excuse for a dispenser of cleansing liquid that I have ever been unfortunate to utilise in my entire life.

A shower can be a wonderful thing, an invigorating jet of hot water that urges you into wakefulness and leaves you tingling and fresh. My shower at home is a particularly fine example of this, I can safely say that I have never experienced better. What I expect to get in a hotel is not this, but I do expect something sufficient for my sanitary needs. I expect to be able to get clean, to be able to rinse the shampoo from my hair in a reasonable amount of time. This as you may guess is not what I got.

No. What you get if you are unfortunate enough to stay in room 233 at Swindon’s main Holiday Inn (I can’t speak for the express versions, of which there are unaccountably for a provincial town, two) is a trickle. I am deadly serious here. I have been in drizzle with more liquid force than this shower. I would have been better off attempting to rinse the soap from my naked body (don’t get too excited at the thought, I’m not available no matter how alluring you find the thought of a naked me) by stepping out on a misty morning and hoping the water vapour in the air would be effective. The amount of water the shower produced was roughly equivalent to the level of rainfall in the Sahara in the dry season. This, as showers go, was the most thoroughly disappointing experience of my life. I have felt cleaner after playing rugby on a muddy field than I did after I had this excuse for a shower.

What must be said is that the rest of my weekend at the hotel in question has been pretty good, especially considering it was a reunion of my wife’s family, populated almost entirely by people I think I’ve met before but can’t be sure about, let alone remember their names. I had a good time, and I think I might even come again next year.

Just so long as I don’t have to stay in the same room.

Before I go though I'd like to thank the Wonderful wendy in the housekeeping department who found my daughters missing toy and will be sending it back to us. There are some wonderful things about the place after all!

Universal Truths

So the other day those lovely people at Thames Water cut off my supply by accident. This, of course, made a change from them letting it piss out of ill maintained victorian piping, that has never let me down. Of course, they screwed with my water while replacing said reliably ill maintained victorian pipes.

Anyway on to the universal truths...

1. Your water will be cut off as you are about to step into the shower.

2. The moment it is cut off you will need to urinate and, by force of habit, will flush.

3. 10 minutes later you will need a crap, a crap of the kind that no mortal man has ever needed before, the kind that smells of satan's farts and fills the bowl to a depth hitherto unthought. You will not be able to believe that your body could contain this much waste and survive.

4. Thanks to truth 2 you will not be able to flush away truth 3.

Wednesday was NOT a good day.

Money money money....

I would like someone to explain, if it's at all possible, why urban music, hip hop, so called R & B and the like seems to have an obsession with money. For example as I was watching a video by an ex member of the So Solid Crew the other day on breakfast TV, I was struck by the fact that the entire subject of both song and video was how much cash he could wave around. Destiny's Child have done it too, with their hit Miss Independent, some other bunch of fuckwits spoiled the Bill Withers song Lovely Day by changing it to it's a lovely day I just got paid.

Is this what's important? Is cash better than love? Does money mean more than sex? Is it better to buy a shag than to romance your way into a relationship? Wasn't this all done better at the end of the 80's?

It used to be guns, killing and drugs that dominated the modern end of music, and people were worried that this, along with the rude words would turn our children into a nation of psychotic killers. Well, if the Daily Mail is to be believed (which it very rarely is) it has, as every child in the UK wanders around waving a foot long machete before jabbing it, at random, into their classmates on a whim. The thing is, that isn't really true, knife crime is now more publicized rather than being more common. I find it far more scary that the theme of modern music is greed, the I must have it all and flaunt it culture. What effect will this have on our kids, making it acceptable to behave in brazen displays of false opulence.  I shall remain forever unimpressed by the thickness of the gold chain around your neck, the numbers of gaudy diamond rings adorning your stubby fingers, the flashness of your ride or whip leaves me cold and, no matter how fat the wad of cash you wave at me, I shall not admire you.

As I said, this was all done better at the end of the 80's, Harry Enfield's character Loadsamoney released a single all about his money. You know what, he was an entirely dislikable creation too!