Thoughts and Musings

So we're getting closer and closer to W-Day. Today marks 3 months and 3 days until we walk down the aisle, with the betrothed walking down a little after me. Today we were considering music to accompany this exciting event. My suggestion of the theme from James Bond was not met with widespread approval.

We're very privileged that some of our friends are going to be playing the music, and even more so that one of the best men is going to be writing it, but this has produced some extra difficulties. He's asked us to put together a playlist to give him some inspiration about what kind of things we like. Apart from some of the things being wildly inappropriate - Baby Get Back is apparently not suitable, despite providing excellent strutting opportunities; it turns out that most of the things we like aren't particularly instrumental, or, you know, good.

We've put something together using the magnificence of Spotify, which mainly consists of Sufjean Stevens, Coldplay and some Divine Comedy, but it's amazing how indecisive we can be when faced with something of this importance. We figured that it would be easy - I've been listening to music for most of the past 23 years, you'd think that I could decide on some favourites, but apparently not.

While in the gym yesterday morning, I totally invented a new hobby...it just needs a name, because "Listening to the audio from BBC News 24 while watching pro-wrestling" is a bit clunky. I love watching the television banks at the gym - it makes me feel like a jogging Ozymandias. Their choice of channels is...interesting to say the least. Yesterday, aside from the wrestling and news that I mentioned earlier, they also had a football match between Paraguay and Ecuador (making me think of this clip), Good Morning (or This Morning, or GMTV or UNIT, whatever it's calling itself these days) and what appeared to be a music channel entirely devoted to Miley Cyrus.

Today we're heading down to Dalkeith, which may actually be in the middle of nowhere - we're going to go look at samples of A6 card for the wedding invitations. We had considered just making paper aeroplanes and throwing them in the general direction of our friends, but the prevailing winds were too strong.

OK, that's all for now - I have to go figure out where the heck the Hardengreen Industrial Estate is. It sounds like somewhere they should be using as the set for a Doctor Who episode.

By the way, I've decided to give this newfangled 'Twitter' thing a try. I'll give it two weeks. If, after that, I don't feel that my life has been revolutionised, I'll return to being a hermit on Facebook. (Wasn't that a rock album?)

In The News This Week...

So just some quick-hit thoughts on this week's news - me and the beloved are off to a wedding in about an hour. This is the last milestone before our wedding, and so we're doing our best not to be in a constant state of freaking out.

For those of you who enjoy schadenfreude (something of a tautology there), our flight back to Edinburgh is smack-bang in the middle of the Newcastle/West Ham match. I couldn't have actually planned it any worse. I'm trying to figure out if wearing my scarf while watching the recording will give them retroactive good fortune. Anyway, on to my thoughts (apologies to Facebook readers if the links don't work - you'll have to check out the original):

Joanna Lumley Saves Gurkhas - Next Week the World!

So this week, Joanna Lumley single-handedly secured the right to settle in Britain for any Gurkha who retired before 1994. I mean, there might have been some lawyers involved at some point, but I'm pretty sure they were just window-dressing. It was clearly dear Joanna who did all the hard work.

It probably had a lot to do with the way they protested, too. One of their signs read "Please do not Discriminate Gurkhas" This tells me that these chaps truly are British - nice and polite. After the protest, they probably all had a nice cup of tea.

Still More MP Insanity

Another day, another hundred ridiculous expenses claims. My fiancee suggested that instead of a second home in London, Parliament should just have a big dorm that all the MPs could stay in when they were in town. I couldn't think of a good enough argument against it. The only potential difficulty is that MPs might actually spend some time in their constituencies, and we'd all realise what useless layabouts they actually are.

Woman Gives Birth to Sextuplets

This story is pretty interesting, not least for the fact that according to the BBC news story, 30 medical staff were involved in the delivery, which took five minutes. How did they all fit around the bed?

Toddler Buys JCB for £8,000 on eBay

Aside from the terrifying fact that a three-year-old is better at using eBay than I am, the really upsetting part of this story is that the parents aren't actually going to buy the digger - poor wee girl. We're hearing more and more stories of children using technology they shouldn't. There is clearly only one possible outcome here.

Maybe I'm Just Growing...

I think I'm growing up.

It was Eric's wedding yesterday. The Eric in question being Eric Hanna, my former flatmate and good friend. And now he's married.

I should be more freaked out by this.

In the run-up to the wedding, people kept asking me 'don't you find it weird?' or 'does it make you feel old?', and I laughed them off, saying that Eric was a special case - that we had long felt he had been born at the age of forty, and that marriage was inevitably going to happen sooner, rather than later. The truth is though, that I think it didn't bother me because I'm growing up.

What? Did I just write that?

I have pulled out the old adage so many times - "I have to grow old, I don't have to grow up", and to an extent it's true. I still say and do really stupid things, still laugh over-loudly at simple jokes, and today at church I spent ten minutes making faces at somebody else's baby. I still love watching cheesy sci-fi TV shows, and drawing moustaches on photographs in the newspaper. I still get excited about colouring in, and I still hold tightly to the childish hope that Newcastle United might actually win...something before the 50th anniversary of our Fairs Cup win.

What this doesn't change, however, is that I am actually maturing.

What, me? The person who still thinks the highest form of humour is tapping someone on the shoulder and then hiding? The person who spends most of his shift at work singing and coming up with ridiculous nicknames for the kids? The guy who once invented an entire imaginary rock band and who has spent the years since trying to convince people they exist?

Yeah, me.

I have duties now. People who look up to me, people who I'm in charge of, people whom I'm
responsible for, a good job, great prospects, and a whole lot of stuff to do with my life. And you know what? I'm loving it.

I think I'm growing up.

Don't get me wrong - I don't intend to stop doing any of the ridiculous things that I do now. I don't intend to become a 'suit' or to sell out to the man (or given my chosen career path, the woman). In fact, I intend to be the same person I always was...just doing a bit better at it. I have no intention of turning into someone who counts the pennies (Unless it's for change for the bus) and complains about the youth of today. Frankly, I'm not that keen on leaving the youth of today.

I guess that I'm switching the adage around. I guess I'm not keen on growing old, but maybe, just maybe growing up might be OK.