Lloydie’s Blog

Wow. Two posts since the start of the year. I’m awesome at this blogging thing. I mean, just awesome. I should get some kind of award. I wonder if there’s a “You Forgot About Your Blog But You’re Still Awesome” award?

ok, so I didn’t actually forget about my blog. I moved to America. Yes, yes, I know they have the internet in America (well, most of it I think). I’ve just been kinda busy. And lazy. Mainly lazy.

Note to self: update the About section. You no longer live in London.

If you’re wondering “why the hell did he move to America?”, the short answer is “fortune and glory”. ok, that’s actually the Indiana Jones answer, but I’m running with it. In reality, it’s for boring reasons like work and cost of living and the phrase “why not?”. Also, I heard they were having a recession and I thought I’d get in on that. I mean, there’s now more dollars to the pound! Awesome! oh wait… that’s not a good thing is it? Bugger.

So what have I been doing with my lazy arse for the past 6 months apart from moving to the US? Not a lot actually (that’s why it’s called a “lazy” arse - it doesn’t do much - really it doesn’t). Obviously there’s been boring stuff like finding somewhere to live and buying a car and all that stuff, but on the whole it’s been a cavalcade of TV dinners and a day job. Oh, and “settling-in”. People have been asking me how I’m “settling-in” for the past 4 months. They’re beginning to stop now, perhaps because I’m seeming like less of a foreigner by the day (my consistent use of the word “awesome” no doubt to blame).

Anyway, I have made a decision that his blog will lie dejected no longer. I’m making a concerted effort to update it “regularly”. And no, I don’t consider bi-anually to be “regular”. I mean, I’m living in the sodding USA, there must be something I can bitch write about on here.

It happens to the best of us. You’re sat on the tube when all of a sudden, the Arctic Monkeys stop singing. Great, you think to yourself, I’ve got another 30 minutes of silent tube hell. Faced with this nightmarish concept, your mind starts to wander. You’re thinking, what can I do to occupy myself? In such a grave and depressing situation, it’s amazing where the mind ends up.

You begin to look around the tube train, desperately seeking something to pacify your overactive brain. You start to look at the other passengers, it’s rush-hour so the train is quite full. After about five minutes of playing “which one of you smells of cabbage?”, you run out of games to play in your mind. Whatever you do, you can’t be seen to be staring at anyone, for therein lies danger. So you’re subtle. You casually glance around, not concentrating on any one person for too long. Yes, whatever game you come up with it can’t involve any sort of deep analysis. You’ve already aroused too much suspicion trying to sniff out the cabbage-man. You need a game that deals with split second decisions. And so, pint-or-punch is born.

Your new mission is to divide up the inhabitants of the carriage, given a single cursory glance of each, into two groups. People for whom you would buy a pint at the pub, and people for whom you would give a punch in the face. The groups are exclusive and there is no middle ground. You cannot waiver, you must make an instantaneous decision.

As you start to play, you begin to feel guilty. Sure, this isn’t life-or-death, it’s pint-or-punch, but should you really be deciding that you’d punch someone based on their looks alone. You remind yourself, for the sake of your own sanity, that you are in no way going to start punching people on the underground. This is just a thought experiment. You are, after all, extremely bored.

Your conscience is rattled even more when, having categorised an old woman as having what you’ve deemed to be a “punchable face”, you realise that a girl you’d singled out for a free pint moments before is actually her daughter. You begin to see the similarity in their faces, stumbling upon the rationale that you would have bought the woman a pint had she only been 20 years younger. Shockingly you then realise that, by your very own reasoning, that young girl is about 20 years away from a punch in the face.

Having scared yourself into intellectual meltdown, you stop playing and pickup a loose copy of the Metro.

It’s New Year so I figured I should probably, as is traditional, write some resolutions. I normally make some sort of half hearted resolutions which are duly forgotten by February, but this year is going to be different. This year I’m writing them down. Of course, it doesn’t mean I’ll stick to them, but at least I’ll have a physical record of my failure (and who doesn’t like having that). OK, here goes:

1) Be more arsed.

This is an old favourite that I fail at every year. Basically, if there’s something that needs to be done and I don’t really want to do it, I can often be heard to utter the phrase “I can’t be arsed“. I therefore resolve to stop being lazy and start doing all the jobs that I couldn’t be arsed to do before.

2) Drink less.

Apparently I have gained a reputation for being somewhat of a heavy drinker. It’s true, perhaps I could drink less beer. I mean, perhaps I should cut down on the binge drinking a bit, as it is kinda killing me. Also, I drink an awful lot of tea. Maybe I shouldn’t.

3) Drink more.

Everybody knows red wine is good for you. I probably don’t drink enough wine. I therefore resolve to drink more wine in future, perhaps instead of beer. I probably shouldn’t drink it instead of tea though, as I drink too much alcohol at work already (in retrospect, this may be where my reputation comes from).

4) Exercise (no, the sauna is not “exercise”).

Last year I joined a gym. It’s in the same building that I work in, which I thought would be pretty convenient. I still think it is. Every morning as I walk past it I think to myself “wow, my gym is really conveniently located right next to my office”. This year I’m going to actually go inside, I promise.

As you may or may not already know, yesterday was my birthday. Subsequently, I’m writing the obligatory “taking stock of my life” post.

You see, now I’ve reached the grand old age of 28, I started to think that maybe there’s more to life than just drinking tea and beer? I mean, obviously I do other stuff as well, like go to work and eat dinner and all that. It’s just that if I were to die right now, and have my life flash before my eyes, I can’t help but think there would be a hell of a lot of tea and beer drinking to watch.

In fact, one could probably be forgiven for thinking that is wasn’t my life flashing before their eyes at all, but some random commercial break which just happened to be broadcast in their penultimate moments. It’s a scary thought.

So what does this mean for yours truly? A change of beverage perhaps? Well, no. That’s no really the point (although I can see why you might think that. I don’t blame you, it’s my fault really). The point is; maybe it’s time I grew up and did something with my life? Maybe it’s time I started acting my age?

The problem here being, acting my age is a lot more difficult that it sounds. You see, I have no idea what 28 year olds are supposed to act like. In fact I’ve been pretty much stumped since the age of 25. I have, therefore, been acting like a 25 year old ever since, and will probably continue to do so until I figure out exactly how I should be behaving. This may not sound like an issue now, but I can only assume it’s going to get worse the older I get.

And so, my birthday resolution is this; work out how 28 year olds are supposed to act, follow suit and, while I’m at it, achieve something meaningful with my life. Oh, and maybe lay off the tea and beer.

It’s my birthday next week so, needless to say, I’m feeling old. Scratch that. I am old.� I have proof.

A couple of days ago I applied for some free tickets to a Christmas Special recording of Top Of The Pops. Apparently the Kaiser Chiefs are going to be on, so I figured “why the hell not”. Also, the BBC studios are pretty close to my office. Oh, and did I mention it’s FREE. All I had to do was apply…

And apply I did.

Not only did they say “No”, they also suggested that perhaps I’d like to apply for tickets to a Strictly Come Dancing recording instead.

I mean, I know I’m not exactly “target audience” for TOTP, being post-puberty and all, but Strictly Come Dancing? Come on! I’m not that old, am I?

Right, rant over. I’m off to catch The Archers on Radio 4.

I was discussing personality profiles with Carolyn the other day. I remember taking one as a kid at school, the whole class took them. Once we’d taken them, we all got to read each others and say whether or not we thought they were accurate. Apart from testing the correctness of your results, it was also pretty interesting to find out what everyone else thought about you. I was voted “most laid-back”. I remember thinking this was kinda weird at the time, as we didn’t actually get to vote about anyone else, just me. Was my teacher was trying to tell me something? I don’t know. It’s lucky I’m so laid-back, otherwise I could have gotten seriously paranoid.

After our little discussion, Carolyn (being ever resourceful) goes and finds this website where you can take the tests. And so, of course, I did.

It’s a series of multiple choice questions (72 to be exact) that were developed by some people called Myers and Briggs (there’s also thing Jung guy that it’s kinda based on). It has some pretty serious psychological backing, it’s not just one of those “tell me your favourite colour or you’ll have bad luck for 5 years” things.

Anyway, as I was saying, I took the test. Apparently I’m an ENFP. So what the hell is an ENFP and, more importantly, why the hell do you care?

So it works like this. You take the test and then you get given your “personality type”. There are 16 of them, and everyone is one (and only one). Each one has a rubbish acronym that doesn’t make much sense (i.e. ENFP). They also have more poetic names, which vary depending one where you look. For example, on one site I’m in a group called “The Inspirers”. On another I’m “The Advocate”, and on yet another I’m “The Visionary”. I’m sticking with that one until I find a site where it’s calling me “The Most Awesomest Future Ruler of the Free People”.

Once you’ve got your acronym you can them look up the profile of your type, e.g. what it all actually means. This is where it gets really interesting. This site, for example, contains information on your profile, career choices, personality and relationships, you name it. And the weird thing is, it’s all scarily accurate. Like “bugger me, have they been following me for weeks or something?” accurate. I mean, it’s lucky I’m so laid-back, otherwise I could have gotten seriously paranoid.