5-for-life

Well good afternoon to you all, I’m spending a lazy afternoon of my leave writing to you all from my blog, though I want it making clear I am not on strike like certain others who just fancy a long weekend (not that I blame you!) I actually am taking pre-booked leave.

Anyway to the business of the day what has been happening with my life, well this morning I was strolling down to my local video-rental store (no product placement in this blog thank you!) to rent a copy of “An education” (Okay that’s product placement but even so it’s a great film, watch it!) to watch this evening after University Challenge and Only Connect – I know my life truly is lived on the edge! Anyway the video shop was closed and wasn’t due to open for 15 minutes so I was stuck with something of a quandary over what to do for a quarter of an hour, after all walking home only to turn around and come back out again seems somewhat frivolous. Eventually I decided that I would use the time to get a badly needed haircut since I was starting to look a bit “Hells-Angelly”, not a look I am keen to cultivate! I considered using the closest barber but I always think he gives the impression of a man who even Sweeney Todd might have raised eyes at the ethics of so I settled on a new barber I’ve never used before – quite a traumatic experience as any man will tell you which is why we often stick to the same barber for years (I usually use “Blow your top”, please feel free to insert your own childish joke at this point!). Anyway the point is that while waiting to be seen I was flicking through one of these dreadful style magazines (sadly no copy of “Take A Break” my usual barber fare to be seen!) in which they suggested that in times of stress you should think about losing everything in the world and what would be the last five things you’d ever give up. To be honest I’m not exactly sure if the magazine still hires this psychologist, I’d hope not given that if I’m stressed being asked to “Imagine you’ve lost everything” is hardly likely to help me! Anyway while I was in the chair I was thinking about this problem while Phillip Schofield and Holly Whatshername were rabbiting on about Yorkshire Puddings to distract the hairdresser and this is the list that I came up with:

5. Tea

Some who know me well may be surprised to see tea so low on my list given how partial I am to our national beverage, however do bear in mind I’ve lost everything almost but still chosen to save tea. Tea to me is surely one of the greatest inventions of all time and of course politically important over the years. Depending on what you believe supposedly one entrepreneurial chap when in Hong Kong to oversee Britain’s newest acquisition was so shocked by the opium trade that was existing alongside the tea trade he paid a small fortune to have some tea seeds smuggled to him whereupon he took them to India and set up new tea plantations free from the stigma of opium and supposedly made an awful lot of money from it. I’m not sure exactly how accurate that story is but whyever he did it I’m glad he did because to be honest right now I couldn't even comprehend the idea of getting up or getting through a day in work without my tea habit. Obviously it can get a bit out of control, one guy on a recent episode of “Come dine with me” confessed to drinking over 30 cups a day which is a bit much but even so tea remains one of the most vital parts of my life.

4. Business wear

Perhaps a little strange to have this so high up my list but I can’t help it I just love my suits. I know people who absolutely hate having to wear a suit but if I had my choice I’d wear it every day. I don’t know why maybe it’s just that a suit belies a sort of arrogance and elevated social standing that I want to pretend I have and maybe there is a certain truth to that, I think everyone would confess that there is a certain snobbery to me, but I prefer to think I just like to look neat and I think cufflinks are just beautiful! I think actually if there was a fire at my home I would dash back and leave everything except my cufflinks and ties, yeah I’ll confess that even writing that sounds quite weird!

3. Arthouse Cinema

This probably is my most recent innovation to this list because a few years ago I’d never seen a foreign film except for Amelie but just of late I’ve suddenly gotten a bit of an obsession with niche film. Now to quote a recent conversation “Don’t you like any normal films” and I’ll admit that it sounds a pretty fair criticism to make but I think it needs to be qualified a bit. After all I’ve seen three stunning mainstream films this year in the English language (“An education”, “Precious” and “The soloist”) that would make English language films still second in my Great Films Of The Year By Country list (France has four in there). My point is simply that if a foreign film gets across here then it must be pretty good, I’m equally certain that if I lived abroad I’d still only see a few great films, and they’d be same ones I love when I watch them here. Quite simply there are some stunning foreign films out there (Watch “Sin Nombre” for an example of arguably the greatest film of the last 12 months) and you shouldn’t deprive yourself of them just by stigmatising subtitles, to be honest these days I find I actually prefer subtitles, but then again I’m weird!

2. Savings & Financial Advice

I think this is probably still the most obvious one on my list, especially if I’ve had to loose almost everything, knowing how to save money is probably of vital importance. I do know that financial talk bores a lot of people but to be honest I don’t think I find anything more important and fun to talk about! I never fail to be stunned at people who either have no idea what their bank balance is or who have no kind of savings plan, even more surprising are those who do have savings but are not doing anything with them. I will rarely go a week without checking on what sort of rates are going let alone leaving my money for years without doing anything with it. Amazingly there are other people who won’t change their bank because they’ve “Always used them”, so???? Do people honestly think that they owe a bank some kind of loyalty? I would say if I could declare advice to anyone it would always be to keep an eye on your money and make sure it works for you because saving is one of the most fun and beneficial things you’ll ever do! – Well maybe not fun but definitely worth it!

1. Wine

I don’t think there will be any surprises with this choice; I have a lot of things in my life that I love but none quite so much as my wine. One of my greatest hatreds in modern life is the “anti-wine” brigade who think that people like my good self who have real wine standards are just being fussy, but anyone who has tasted really good wine will know exactly what I am talking about. There is sadly so much poor wine about in the world, and even poorer people who will order, say, a bottle of “White zinfandel” or something – URGH! Why would you possibly order such a thing????? And yet when you hit upon a good wine, and I mean a really great wine, there is nothing like it in the world, wine truly is an absolutely unique creation, if, for example, you order a bottle of Budweiser at a bar somewhere no matter when it was made (unless it was brewed in the last 1860’s or something) it’s always likely to taste pretty much the same and it won’t taste much different to any other beer in the world. And yet if you buy yourself a bottle of wine (well as long as you’re paying at least £5 a bottle for it) you’ll never have the same taste twice it’s an absolutely amazing creation is good wine and to be honest if I lost everything else in the world that I’d ever owned, the one thing I’d want at hand would still be a good 2007 Montepulciano!

Anyways that’s my list of five and to be honest it was a nice exercise and surprisingly easy to do, of course if it was my list for Room 101 then I’d probably still be sat in the barbers chair now trying to whittle down my list of things I hate from about 16,000,000 things!

This week Matt:

Had a lovely weekend in Leicester, especially with the mad lady at the rugby!

Bought his ticket to “Exit through the giftshop” the first film by Banksy, so looking forward to that one!

Got his tickets to the Shrewsbury Folk Festival……. I’ll get me coat!