Things I Miss

A long distance catch-up with Midge and a short visit with Rerab this afternoon got me thinking. There are a few things I miss these days, including:

The sun...

It's been so long since I saw the sun that if it chose to appear in the sky now I'd probably turn into a medieval villager and start screaming about the fiery ball of doom about to consume us all.

...and not being wet

I'm not kidding when I say I have spent the last three months in the wet, howling dark. With the rain coming sideways most days, the short walk to work usually sees me arrive looking like I've just stepped, fully clothed, out of the shower.

Reading at lunch

Once upon a time, when I worked with Midge, every lunch saw me getting a solid half hour of Kindle time. My new working life stole that lunch break entirely for a stretch, but being in (another) new team has meant taking lunch breaks once more. Sadly, my Kindle hasn't yet made it out of my bag as people insist on talking to me instead.

Knowing who pop stars are, and them being any good

Most of my brushes with popular music these days consist of me asking "What's a Macklemore?" or "so, people actually buy this shit?"

To my ears, all pop now sounds like this (and thanks to Is for sharing):

For iPhone/iPad click here.

My telly choices

Luckily, NikNak and I share similar tastes in film and telly and therefore avoid a lot of arguing over the TV remote. However, there are a few things I like that NikNak wouldn't be caught dead watching. Reality TV, heavy literary adaptations, historical dramas and films that feature a lot of dancing are all things which must wait until he's either asleep or out of the house. But the fact that he's a super-sensitive sleeper who seems to instinctively know that you've changed the channel, and that I'm either asleep or at work when he's out of the house, means that I must simply accept that I will never get to watch Channing Tatum dance again. Sniff!

Films that don't make me fall asleep

I've always been something of a film buff and times gone by saw me often in the cinema, buying at least a few DVD's a month, and able to reel off a ton of new releases I was looking forward to. It's been a pretty pants few years for films, and even the ones I've got around to watching have put me to sleep within a few minutes. The Lone Ranger prompted an instant coma, Carrie wasn't a patch on the original, Star Trek: Into Darkness lacked all of the charm that made its predecessor such fun, and American Hustle was so boring that I started watching Christian Bale's comb-over rather than caring about anything happening. Thank the gods, then, for The Wolf of Wall Street and Leonardo DiCaprio's hilarious turn that managed to make me forget that I think he's a douchebag most of the time.

Being able to play computer games

NikNak and I spend a lot of time playing computer games but, over the years, the games we play have started to change. Games have evolved a lot since I first picked up a controller, becoming bigger and more complex with each release. Unfortunately, my skills have not evolved with them, and my attempts at playing Assassin's Creed saw me showing off my falling off roof skills while my tendency to accidentally steal from crowds of people meant I spent a lot of time running away from enraged mobs.

Halo wasn't any better, after I somehow jammed myself into a corner under enemy fire and couldn't get back out again, and even Little Big Planet was too hard. From now on I'm sticking with the Lego games, which are far more my style (although I still get stuck a lot).


Liking Johnny Depp

Johnny Depp used to be the coolest man on the planet. Never apparently one to actively court fame, instead of going for the money he could usually be found starring in great little indies while keeping his private life mostly private (apart from the odd bout of hotel room trashing). Captain Jack clearly did something irrevocable to him, as he can now be found starring in the latest Disney shitshows which have clearly had more money than thought flung at them, had an awful mid-life crisis hairdo and picked up the young blonde to match, while having his PR feed  "Isn't Amber great?" pieces to the tabloids at least once a week. Still, at least he seems to have stopped with the scarves.....for now.


Hating Bieber

Let me start this by saying that I have never knowingly heard a Justin Bieber song. And up until recently, I didn't really think much of the kid at all, other than that he seemed to have more money than was good for him and no-one telling him no. I still think that's the case, and I'm still going to avoid hearing his music for as long as is humanly possible, but in an age where most celebrities are busy protecting the brand and hiding any signs of their true personalities, I'm starting to be grateful for at least one celebrity who is good for gossip and who seems set to give us plenty more chuffed looking mugshots in 2014.

Believing that I'd get to the end of A Game of Thrones before the show does

I first started reading the Song of Ice and Fire series back in 2010. I was late to the party too - many had been reading since A Game of Thrones was first published back in 1996. Eighteen years later, we're still waiting for the last two books (and the last entry, A Dance With Dragons, was published six years after its predecessor).

I used to worry that George RR Martin would pull a Robert Jordan before the series end. Now I'm worried that the show will get to the end long before the books do.