Hey good lookin'...

ANOTHER mental dream last night. These make Tony Soprano's fever-induced nightmares look like kids TV.

So I'm sitting on the steps of my New York apartment (err, what?) staring into the sunrise when I hear some junkies down to my left wheeling and dealing their steroids. They start arguing and one spits on another.

At that, a really handsome Italian-American bloke comes over and starts chatting me up. He suggests that we go shopping together, across to the Early Learning Centre - yep, the Early Fucking Learning Centre?! - on the corner directly opposite my house. A glance at the shop's sign tells me it actually houses a Gap and a New Look as well, so I'm raring to go.

Apparently Dream Me spends his time going round women's shops with random strangers.

I go into my flat to get a change of top and spruce up for the wee trip to the shops with my new found handsome mate. As I'm upstairs getting changed, I hear him wandering around downstairs - raiding through my fridge to see what I've got - and I realise that he's noseying around to see what I'm like. All this, I realise, because he fancies me.

He's gay, and he thinks he's just chatted me up and that we're about to go on a little date. I start pacing around my room, panicked, wondering how I can possibly break it to a gay man that my happy-go-lucky acceptance of his offer was friendly, not a sign that I'm about to let him in my pants.

The dream ended at this point, but not before I fixed my hair in the mirror and started heading downstairs, thinking to myself: "He is quite handsome..."

Then I woke up.

What the fuck does that mean?! Did I just have my first gay dream?! Is this my subconscious telling me that I secretly wish I was being propositioned by Italian-American homosexuals?!

I'm scared to go to sleep tonight. What next?

Sleepy babies en route to FC Copenhagen

This last week I've had LOADS of crazy dreams, and now I'm wishing I had noted every single one down. It'd only help as evidence for the day I'm locked in a rubber room with some therapist trying to get in my head.

Dopey and slevery, I rolled round in bed the other day and Jen remarks on me being a "sleepy baby". My reply? "How can I... be a sleepy baby... Sleepy babies wouldn't make it all the way to the football in Copenhagen..."

Sound logic there.

The same morning I woke up in a sweat, upset enough that Jennifer actually had to comfort me. I was in a real flap. Why?

"I dreamt we'd had a baby... A fat and ugly baby!"

Friday night on the eve of the Old Firm match, I have another classic. Despite not being a fan of either of Glasgow's ugly sisters, I dreamt I was at the match in the Celtic end.

Weirdly, it wasn't actually a football match in a stadium - it was just a player from each team, with Neil Lennon looking on in a coaching role as they competitively chased a ping-pong ball around an old church. Seriously.

Naturally, two priests were the match officials. They had to step in when the crowd started rioting and chasing the ping-pong ball too.

Another one last night - that I was at a training conference with my work and through the room next door, Marilyn Manson was playing to about 50 folk.

Makes perfect sense, eh?

So the organisers of this Manson concert - who had so sensibly organised for the concert to be in a room next to my work's training conference - had been asking £40 a ticket, but seeing as he'd already started, they only wanted £17 now.

As I snuck off from training for a piss, I peeked in - extremely jealous that I couldn't be there.

I bumped into my mum and told her she HAD to go in - for £17 she'd be seeing one of the best live acts of all time. So she did, despite being more into Donny Osmond and David Cassidy than Marilyn bloody Manson. My pals Cat and Laura were in the middle of sneaking in for free, and my mate Gav was storming past in a huff, moaning about what a rip-off £17 was.

I went back through to training and tried to get them to "hurry the fuck up" so I could go watch Manson.

None of these dreams are quite as strange as the night I was muttering during my sleep on holiday in Ireland. Only 14 at the time and in a thick Donegal accent that no-one knew I could do, I angrily moaned: "Let me through to the bar... Let me through to the fucking bar!"

A worrying insight into my subconscious.

Hello readers...

Still alive. Not killed by bus rapist. Still eating Asda brand Bananabix. Recently watched an episode of Murder, She Wrote set hundreds of years previous with an IDENTICAL ancestor of Jessica Fletcher's... Brilliant.

I've not forgotten about my poor little blog. New blogs soon!

Ramblings of an Ageing Man-child

OK, so no developments on my bus adventures, but rest assured - I'll continue to sit in that middle seat and will post as soon as The Weirdo reappears with ensuing fracas.

Anyway, slowly but surely in recent months, I've come to accept the inevitable... In behaviour now as well as age, I am more man than boy.

Since turning 20 back in 2006 I've put up a hard fight against all the signs of aging, but I'm now resigned to my fate. I'm a man, just like my dad before me: the man who has a table of coastal tides for reference purposes, nose hair clippers, a very wide variety of ordinance survey maps and several purple jumpers. I'm half-way there.

I accepted this over the weekend, as Jennifer and I parked up at our new flat (with all magnolia decor) and transferred "documents" and misc. crap from one car to the other - a Peugot 406 to our brand new Vauxhall Vectra. The only way I could possibly be thinking more about what an old fart I'd grown into was if the precocious little kids-acting-as-men from the Zafira adverts had shown up:



Actually, it wasn't so much the fancy Vectra - with it's built-in screens, 4-CD changer and Bluetooth capabilities - that made me contemplate my predicament as it was a mysterious box inside.

"What is this?" I ask, carrying it carefully from one car's boot to the other.

"A dinner service."

It was fully 10 minutes before I even thought to question what particular dinner service it was, where it had come from and who had given it to us. I'm now so mature that I don't question my possession of a spare dinner service. Very worrying.

That, however, has got me thinking on how I can retain my youthfulness - what I like to think of as my "boyish charm" and what Jennifer would no doubt call my "unbelievable immaturity." And it occurred to me that, day to day, I'm already doing whatever possible to stave off the final steps of becoming a Fully-Fledged Man. Unconsciously, I'm doing everything in my power to remain a man-child.

On Thursday, two of our best pals became parents for the first time. We took them all manner of fancy baby presents and along with it, gave them a card that I picked out. The message on the front read:

"Congratulations! You've given birth to a baby boy, which is amazing and creative! The only amazing and creative thing I ever did was make a fruit salad at school."

Promptly displayed on the windowsill along with all the mature, pale blue cards they'd received, I felt strangely proud of my stupid card.

In fact, I've just now become aware of another childish thing I'm doing without thinking - as I type, I'm watching CBBC's "Dick and Dom's Diaries." This isn't research for my blog, oh no. This is just what I consider a morning's entertainment.

Perhaps the greatest example I can give you of this subconscious fight between childhood and manhood involves my trip to Amsterdam, of all places. Me and my best mate - the one with whom I once nearly got thrown out of a family restaurant because we could not stop laughing at a man with a monobrow - are all booked up to visit the capital of the Netherlands for a football trip in March.

We really should not be trusted to do this together.

All credit to her, my missus has not once questioned what I'll be up to on the trip. No interrogations about coffee shops or red lights, it's all taken on trust that I'll be on my best behaviour... The way it should obviously be between two mature adults in a serious relationship.

She did however frown with great concern when I told her that we might visit a fetish night club "for a laugh."

"Apparently men lead each other about on dog chains and folk run amok in gimp masks. It sounds brilliant! Me and Thomas just want to go in, order a pint at the bar and down them with the straightest faces possible, like it's A. N. Other bar. It'll be hilarious!"



In no way can she see what's funny about my and my straight mate visiting a kinky Dutch gay bar. And that, I'm pleased to report, probably means I'm not yet mature.

Fart bogies bum boobs fanny.

RIP

Hi readers. I come bearing bad news. Unfortunately, Graeme was tragically beaten to death with a bus timetable tonight.












Just kidding. Middle seat rapey weirdo didn't get on my bus today, but I strangely enjoyed sitting in his seat and anticipating him getting on all the same. Same again tomorrow!

Wish me luck, readers

The very thought of the mission I'm about to undertake sends pangs of excitement and shudders of nervousness through me. I'm like James bloody Bond.

Tomorrow, I've decided, I'm going to get on the bus, go to the back row, and sit on the middle seat.

Yeah... The middle seat!



Actually, on reflection, I've realised that you may not understand the enormity of what I'm going to do. Having never been on the bus I get home from work, I can in fact see how this looks to you: that I'm simply getting on a bus and sitting on the middle seat of the back row.

Jesus, if only it was that simple!

Let me explain. Night after night I board the 11, flash my Megarider (that's a seven day ticket by the way, not a name for my cock), head for the back and sit wherever's free. The iPod goes on, I pull out whatever book I'm in the middle of, and kick back for the 40 minute ride home.

I generally try to ignore the other punters - mostly old women, working class folk and junkies - and keep myself to myself. Then one day my eyes were drawn to someone... Someone who had broken the rule of the bus.

He'd sat on the seat next to a stranger whilst neighbourless seats were still available!

I could scarcely believe it the first time, but every night the last week he's done this - boarding at the same stop, same time, then proceeding to sit in the middle seat of the back row - regardless of whether he has people to his left and right, as though it was Buckingham Palace and this was his throne!

No-one with whom he lumbers his company can quite believe it, looking at him with a mixture of surprise and disgust.

Matters aren't helped by the fact that, frankly, he looks like a bit of a rapist.

So tomorrow night, for no reason other than curiosity as to what the hell he's going to do about it, I'm going to get on before him and sit on his seat.

Updates tomorrow night.

PS - If tomorrow night's blog isn't forthcoming then I've probably been raped and don't feel like talking about it.

The greatest TV show of all time

Debate rages on as to the single best series ever to air on the box in the corner, and with this blog I intend to set the record straight.

The coveted title goes to an American drama of timeless genius. Not The Sopranos. Nope, not The Wire either. In fact, the greatest TV show of all time is Murder, She Wrote.

Brilliantly scripted, a masterclass in acting, air-tight plots that twist and weave with enviable grace... None of this describes Murder, She Wrote.

Angela Lansbury's Jessica Fletcher is without doubt the best character of all time and the plot itself is incredible - a fictional crime writer who in her spare time jets all around America and the world, always arriving the day before the murder of a friend or their associate and solving the case before her return journey.

It's a miracle she has friends left to visit and even more baffling that they accept her into their homes knowing the inevitable fate - I'd be inconveniently busy should she ever phone to arrange a holiday.

Quite how she's above suspicion from the law as she makes her way from crime scene to crime scene is anyone's guess. Her presence is the common denominator in deaths across all the states of America.

Some of my favourite things about M,SW:

-Jessica interrupting two characters amid suspicious conversation, revealing that she was outside the room the whole time. Equally, a conversation finishing and the camera panning to reveal her little shocked face pinned to the door frame.

-How police forces always give a woman with no law credentials absolute carte blanche in their crime scenes, often unsupervised and leading to key evidence disappearing into her pocket.

-Background extras in police stations, newspaper offices or pretty much any scene who are so determined not to break the "fourth wall" that they'll do anything to avoid looking at Jessica or the camera - usually by staring intently at bits of paper, examining bundles of paper, showing each other bits of paper and taking paper from one desk to an other.

-Finding modern day great actors as fresh-faced rising stars in old episodes, always playing their part with a look of slight embarassment.

-Jessica's icy and socially uncool "I don't believe you" face.

-The murderer's inevitable admission in great detail of how and why they did what they did, presumably saving a whole bunch of time in lengthy court proceedings.

-The ending. Wee bit of jovial chat, the sort of punchline that a Christmas cracker company would reject outright, Jessica's daft face - freeze. Credits.

One of my favourite things in the world is to be sat on a Sunday afternoon with my mum, a glass of Irn Bru and a double-header of Murder, She Wrote.

If you can watch it without outbursts of hilarity and the strange mixture of giddiness and rage, shouting angrily at Jessica and her meddlesome ways, then you do not deserve a telly box.



The brilliance of Murder, She Wrote is best seen in its finest episode, 1987's "It Runs In The Family". Set in Britain, its main character is one Emma McGill... Jessica Fletcher's identical cousin, played by Angela Lansbury.

Yes, identical cousin.