Happy Anniversary to us!

So it's been a year since me & Hannah got married. The nicest thing Hannah's done for me this (new) year of marriage, is allow me to eat the last 3 peanuts when I spent £3 on a tub of classy Sahara crispy coated peanuts when we were in a nice hotel in Gloucester to celebrate our anniversary. I was really hungry and low on salt (I need a salt-lick like horses have) and so I ordered some peanuts from the bar. I think the bar lady was a bit surprised that I refused any drinks and instantly took the peanuts up to our room to enjoy in peace.

It was awesome, because we arrived, ate some shortbread which came free with the room and then Hannah had a nap and I watched telly for 4 hours, it was literally a perfect afternoon. I learned that the human body has about 3 hours worth of energy in it at any one time and after you've exercised all that energy out, you begin synthesising your body fat, which requires alot more oxygen than synthesising glucose out of carbs (which is what you normally use) and so it's much harder to continue exercising. Also; there's a lag between switching from carbs to fat, and this is the point where you're in a nightmare and you've hit the 'wall'. I also learned that the perfect physique for sustained physical activity includes a nice bit of belly flab; it's like a long range fuel tank. Basically, I often tell Hannah that I'm like a Boeing 747, but she's like a Boeing 737...

After Hannah's nap we forced ourselves to go for a walk and discovered there were loads of blackberries nearby and also a paintballing place which seemed to be redundant because there was no sign of any paint anywhere.

Then we had dinner in the hotel restaurant. We had got a Groupon deal which meant that we got dinner included in our package (up to a value of £26 per person). The pesky hotel was a genius because the menu only included the starters and maincourses and so we didn't know how much the desserts were, and therefore we didn't know whether we'd be able to afford a dessert within our £26 budget if we splashed out on our starters and maincourses! As you can imagine, it wasn't a pleasant experience... Only joking! It was ace but Hannah didn't even want a starter so I didn't have a starter either and then I ended up being a bit hungry after the main course so I had cheese for pudding! Cheese for pudding is so great when you're still in savoury mode and especially when it's the most expensive dessert and you still have dinner budget to burn!

Our car's brake lights were fully broken (for quite a while I believe: in hindsight I think alot of people have  been flashing at me for the past few months!) and so we decided that we'd take up the offer from our friends to borrow their lovely new version of our car. It was really nice driving around knowing that other people knew when we were braking.

The end.

The Mo-staaaash story

November is a month that has been hijacked by men growing moustaches for the benefit of prostate cancer sufferers. It’s hard to imagine an equivalent month where women don’t wear makeup; it’s not completely equivalent, but it’s probably similarly horrifying.

Anyway, men love this kind of thing, purely because any attention is better than no attention… and it’s for a good cause!

I (thank goodness) accidentally shaved on November the 2^nd, fully unaware of the momentous decision I was accidentally making, accidentally.

Anyway, someone has to give money to these people, so the more people that accidentally shave accidentally the better.

My friend Joel Michelin Stokes, born August 2^nd on a warm or cold summers morning, evening, day or night had selflessly grown a moustache along with some of his fellow Johnny English Reborn production colleagues. Joel grows a great beard; just like a mossy rock, but seems to have problems with moustaches.

For this reason I decided that Joel needed some sponsorship; but I didn’t get round to it until his second speculative email arrived with a convenient link to his mo-space page.

I clicked through and was not surprised to find that Joel had aptly named himself Giles Keyte, pronounced “Yjeels Kayt”, a French chauvinist womaniser whose moustache would be irresistible to all ladies by the end of the month.

Thoroughly impressed by Joel’s creativity in creating middle class alter-egos I promptly sponsored him and left a message informing him to:

“use this money to purchase a moustache comb, I know it’s meant to be for charity but they won’t notice the odd moustache comb here and there, relax!”

Feeling very satisfied with my days work and thanking my lucky stars for accidentally shaving accidentally on November the 2^nd, I had a look around the Johnny English movember team. There was an amazing group picture of all the crew with Johnny English with an amazing big moustache and Joel with his shining white face.

I had a look at the my friend Yjeels’ team mates and noticed a member by the name of Joel Stokes… Oh crumbs!

Conclusion: Joel had mistakenly sent me a link to his fellow Movember member Giles Keyte, pronounced “Giles Keyte”, thus directly facilitating a transfer of sponsorship from me to him aswell as a comedy message requesting he buys a moustache comb with charity funds. How we laughed.

The end.

Ger-Ger's escapades in Bristol Story

Autumn has arrived! Leaves are beginning to fall, it's harder to get out of bed, our windscreen washer ran out and needed replenishing... not so related to autumn; more related to the length of time between filling up the washer fluid and filling up the washer fluid again.

Anyway, so that sets the seasonal theme, but highly unrelated to this; my parents came for a weekend! I was very excited because when my parents visit they take me to do touristy things and we have lots of nice food and drink, and also lots of great family banter and mercilous teasing of everyone which is a good antedote to pride.

Anyways, so what I really want to share is this:
Our saturday plan was to travel from our house in rural suburban, middle class, green, leafy bliss in Henleaze down into the centre of town to visit SS Great Britain; the greatest boat ever to carry people and then get dumped off the Falklands Island for years before people realised it was an icon of the 19th century and needed hauling back to Bristol to be renevated and looked at.

I'm not here to discuss the funtimes that were had strolling round the SS Great Britain; I'm here to relay the bus-stop times.

So; at the bus-stop was a wonderful homeless ruffian sipping on white lightning cider and playing the harmonica and being very chatty and outgoing to the people around him. When the bus came, we all moved towards the bus, the homeless man included. We all boarded the bus except for the homeless man, who seemed to have some kind of beef with the bus or some people boarding the bus.

As the bus pulled away to a single fingered gesture by the man, my dad let us in on his thoughts on why the man was upset.

My dad said that, as the man had got up from his seat at the bus shelter, my dad had thought he was getting onto the bus, thus abandoning the can of cider that he was leaving sitting on the pavement at the bus stop. My dad then told us that in London, he had a habit (you can also read 'compulsion' here) of knocking over drinks cans he saw left in the street because they would either be left over drink, or urine; i.e. not nice.

So you can take the man out of London, but you can't stop the man knocking over a poor man's treasure in Bristol.

So; the homeless man returned from his outing to the bus entrance to find that someone had knocked over his cider. He wasn't best pleased, but had no idea who had done it. Thus he was very angry with the bus in general.
The end.

The Bordeaux Quay Cookery School Story

For Christmas, Hannah got me a voucher for a 3 course demonstration at Bordeaux Quay cookery school. This involved witnessing a professional chef cook up some delights whilst 16 of us watched and then ate the delights that were produced, accompanied by a glass of wine.

To cut a long story short, we witnessed lots of amazing chopping and garlic crushing, and learnt about great ingredients and cooking techniques.

The highlight of the evening was as Hannah and I were leaving. Hannah was checking her phone which had a few messages on it, and we were exchanging comments about the food we'd just experienced. We both needed to go to the toilet so we went through the door into the toilet area. I went into the mens and suddenly had the realisation that Hannah was still chattering away looking at her phone and following me. She didn't acknowledge the situation until I turned around and said, "wrong place!", at which I've never seen her turn around and run away so fast. I was laughing for the next half an hour.

The End.

The Proposal Story

March 7th, 2010 dawned like a cold day in Vietnam. The light came through my curtains but it was a grey light that cast no shadows, and did not induced a party of sunshine vitamins within my body.
Contrary to how the day began, I was very excited. Lest us forget; this was proposal day. It was 7.30am.

Since Hannah had to be at church an hour earlier than normal, I had to pick her up at 9.20am, which left me precisely only a bit of time to create one of the most mediocre 'proposal themed' clue trails in history. I sprang up, grabbed a suitable desert spoon which would later be dubbed for eternity 'the digging spoon' and left the house (after putting clothes on and ting).

I drove for 10 minutes before I realised I'd left my map and clues behind. I went back to get them, lest us forget that these were vital to the clue trail.



So, Hannah and I first started going out at Blaise Castle, so it was only fitting to venture back there to propose. Or it was unimaginative and convenient. But how unimaginative is a 'proposal themed' clue trail? So hush your gums.
I got googlemaps involved which told me approximately 0.5% of what Blaise Castle would actually be like when I was laying a trail there. I hammed together some amazing clues which loosely led around the landmarks of Blaise castle.
The first clue was for Hannah before we got there, the rest were buried by me and required Hannah to dig them up with the digging spoon. Here they are:

1.
Hello, I am a clue which will lead you to an exciting place!
Follow my trail of riddles and you will be rewarded
Go to a burning manor
Search at the foot of the left-most shrub

(Clue 1, pretty easy. Except the left-most shrub was meant to be one of 3 next to the carpark. In real life, there were about 15 trees next to the carpark.)

2.
Well done! You are a very talented detective Miss Barnes.
To reward your efforts I provide a small gift.
Across the pasture you will find a wood.
Look for the greenest of the green

(Googlemaps said that in the midst of the dark green trees was a light green dazzling tree, sadly winter had ruined that)

3.
Congratulations, you’re cleverer than I gave you credit for!
Another reward for such sterling investigating
I wish to learn more about this “Blaise Castle”, follow me!

(Faint praise)

4.
You’re a very special lady Miss Barnes!
Following all these clues so easily, I’m very impressed.
I’m thirsty, but I only want water from a round expanse.
I lay my clue where the Billy Goat’s gruff lives.

(Wrong! I was referring to underneath a bridge, but that's where the troll lives!)

5.
You are a wonderful lady Miss Barnes!
You are near the end of your journey.
Stand at the bridge, facing where you have come from,
Travel to the first tree in you line of sight.
Once there count 10 large steps North
Then 17 large steps East
Then 12 medium step West
Dig down 20cm...

(Googlemaps said that this would work, real life said that there was a path surrounded by cliffs.)



So finally Hannah was guided to the area where she was to dig for the mystery 20cm deep prize. I'd dug a little bit of earth so that it looked like I'd been there previously and buried something, but after about 2mins of struggling with rocks, roots and worms, I think Hannah was losing faith that this was the right place. I tried to encourage her that this was correct, "maybe underneath the rocks...", "a little to the right maybe?...", Hannah was beginning to fall out of love with the loyal digging spoon servant.

As the kids and dogs moved away the perfect proposal moment approached, I didn't know whether to be on one knee already, or make a big show of it. As I was deciding, a man and woman came walking into our secluded area and hung around for a bit, deciding where to go. This meant another 10 minutes of torturous digging for Hannah. I chipped in a bit of the digging, it was exciting to dig for something!

Eventually all the men, women, children and dogs dispersed and conditions were again perfect. Hannah was soldiering on with her digging spoon against a nice wide layer of rock which was never going to yield.

"Hannah, there's not actually anything in the hole"

I think by this point her suspicions were growing, she turned around and said something like "why?" or "Oh".

I was on one knee as my jeans will proove. I said "Stand up", so she did. I held her hands and said, "Will you marry me Hannah Barnes", can't exactly remember what she said but it was a positive answer.

That's when we cracked open the tiny champagne...

The photobooth story

So, I needed some passport photos. Where do you get passport photos from?

Well the obvious answer is... it varies, but often supermarkets, arcades and train stations cater for the needs of photo hungry passport and visa requirerers.

So I tootled off to Bristol Temple Meads station (built in 1839 by Brunel, it hosts a myriad of trains, photo booths and other reputable services).
The lovely station woman in the season ticket window had no change for my tenner (I'm too weak to carry four £1 coins around, it's much easier to carry five or ten of them in the form of paper and change up when the time requires) so I required another way of obtaining appropriate coinage.

The main ticket windows were all chocker with travellers hoping to set sail on a clickety-clack journey of escapist wonder, and so my gaze turned to the lovely shop run by William Henry Smith.
I purchased some worcester sauce flavour crisps which cost 93p (a shocking markup from their wholesale price) but which left me with precisely a fiver, 7 pence, and four £1 coins which perfectly matched my mission objective.

I preceded delightedly out of the shoppy shop and bounced along to the photo booth making sure that I kept my crisps hidden so that the lovely station woman who failed to change my tenner earlier didn't feel bad for making me spend money for no reason.
I took a seat in the photo machine and dared to wonder whether I'd, just this once, look respectable in the four tiny images about to be created. I clumsily inserted my four Great British Sterling discs and waited for the patronising woman to finish explaining all the things she loves explaining.
I adjusted the seat and waited in heart stopping anticipation for the countdown... 3... 2... 1...

POWERCUT!

Oh bother. Two seconds later the power came on again but the machine had forgotten me. I told the lady, she said there was a number to phone but gave me £4 because she was really really nice.

Then I got my photos done and carried on my day.

The End.

A Brazil story

Recently I was in Brazil to help give a training course. Everyone on the training course spoke English to a varying degree.

As we were walking along the beach road between a restaurant and our hotel I asked one of the men;

"How long do you work each day?"

He replied; "3 years"

But he realised that there was something wrong with this answer in context to the question so he asked me to 're-phrase the question'.

I said; "How many hours do you work for each day?"

He replied; "3 years, yes"

I was happy with that.