Have I been wrong all this time? (Spoiler: No. Maybe, a little.)

I’ve always kind of hated text speak. ‘m8’? What the fuck? How hard is it to type ‘mate’? Useless cretins. I’ve only ever used ‘lol’ twice, and both times it was sarcastic for things that were decidedly unfunny. Emojis and all the associated pictures that you can add to your messages feel like an evolution of that text speak that annoys me so I don’t use them. I never mind it when other people use them, but because text speak always annoyed me, I’ve always refused to use them myself. They say a picture paints a thousand words. Well, give me the thousand words any day. Words can make you understood if you use them correctly. Words have immense power. Power to uplift, power to crush. Power to deceive (just ask most of the UK press).

I’ve tried at times to describe, a little, what it means to me to have Rach in my life, and how I might have turned out without her in older blog entries. Most people know a little about how it feels to be in love. About how having someone there to support, share and experience with makes everything make a little bit more sense. And because most of you know, I’ll not waste time trying to explain how she fills up my heart and soul with a warm glow every day, or how literally everything would be worse without her.

Instead I’ll come to the point (such as it is). She uses smiley faces, colourful heart pictures and other types of emojis in her texts to me. When she affectionately calls me a dork because I have to finish on the hour when doing overtime, not half-past or quarter-to, followed by a smiling face, or a kissing face and some hearts, it genuinely makes my day. I grin and have that little floating-on-air moment you have when you get confirmation that someone you love loves you in return. And I got it because of the emojis I refuse to use.

Still not doing text-speak. Always ‘you are’, or ‘you’re’, never ‘ure’. But knowing now how they can sometimes brighten a day, I may occasionally start using a picture or two. To be honest, the thumbs up in Skype is also a pretty useful thing when you’ve got nothing else to say, but saying nothing feels a little rude. So, maybe the occasional picture along with the words isn’t so bad after all.

Getting older? Sure. Wiser? I couldn’t possibly say.

I just had a birthday. 39. Thirty-nine! How did that happen? It’s a weird kind of hinterland age – half the people I know insist it isn’t old at all, while half are either too polite to agree or are in the same boat with me.

It’s strange, because I still feel like the same person I’ve always been – you don’t feel older exactly – you just are. Sure, you have more experience so might have made different decisions knowing what you know now, but that’s hardly something new.

I am making a bit more of an effort to take joy in the moments and places I can find it, because it feels like it’s more important at the moment in a world where too many people seem bent on making life as joyless as possible. So I took some time off work, bought some new CDs and Blu Rays and soaked up as much of the best parts of my life as I could. Went to the beach with my family on the weekend. The sun was shining but the sea was most definitely still cold. My eldest loves the water though, so I allowed her to convince me to get in, and had a great time just spending time not as a parent, but as a play mate, just remembering the simple yet potent joy of being young and spending a day at the beach.

I felt a few things wrapped up in a towel drying off afterwards. One of those things was cold. However, another was refreshed and enlivened. It seems that the way to stop myself feeling old is to act as though I’m still young! Is that wisdom? I don’t know. Sounds a little bit like it.

New occasional feature: Ending with a song relating to the post:

Oasis: Stay Young. “Stay young and invincible.”

How does it feel to lose your mind?

My memory has never been particularly good. I am reasonably good at retaining things that are interesting to me, but the everyday stuff doesn’t usually stick. Thanks to a wife who is much better at it than me and the occasional making of lists, I manage to get by. Recently however, there was an incident that made me feel uneasy, and wonder if I might be slowly losing my grip on things.

A little ways back we had a spot of sunny weather (hard to believe in our current state of grey skies and rain), during which I dusted off my sunglasses. One day I had taken them to work, and resolved to get a few minor jobs done over my lunch hour. My glasses were on the corner of my desk. At lunchtime I left work and headed to one of our local retail parks. As I arrived at the first shop I wandered inside, picked up a few things, browsed for a moment and went to pay. On the way out I went to put my sunglasses back on, only to realise I didn’t have them.

I checked back at the till, where the shop-worker had no interest in helping me at all. I retraced my way through the shop, checking all the places I had gone. I had a clear memory of wearing my glasses on the walk over, of taking them off as I walked in the shop and of holding them as I walked around. I could only assume that someone had picked them up and walked off with them. Red mist began to descend. While I calmly walked out of the shop and back to work, I was burning internally with a completely over the top fury. The shop, the person who must have taken them, anyone else I found to be slightly irritating; all were wished an untimely and violent death. (As a side note, I don’t genuinely wish for anyone’s death (apart from maybe Robbie Williams’) and wouldn’t attempt to engineer someone’s. I can wish an untimely death on a person internally when I’m annoyed because there’s no such thing as magic, and it wouldn’t actually have any effect. Anyway, due to the aforementioned red mist, this one would like to enter a plea of temporary insanity, guv’nor.)

Upon arriving back at work, it was quite distressing to note that my sunglasses were there on the corner of my desk where I had left them. I had never taken them with me. Those memories of removing them as I entered the shop and such were a garbled pile of steaming crap dreamt up by my failing brain as I struggled to recall the last thing I did with my glasses. So, I had got ridiculously angry over something that I was completely wrong about. Sometimes I can’t help feeling like I’m on the top of a long, gently-sloping decline into obliviousness and dementia. It is a cause for concern.

Beware the time-suckers.

A little while ago, I decided to take tentative steps to re-enter the world of gaming by buying an Xbox 360.  Although I used to be able to wipe the floor with the majority of my friends (as well as anyone at school or the neighbourhood kids), I suspected this time I might fair less well. Due to being an adult with a family and full time job, there isn’t a great deal of time to really get stuck in. Furthermore, gaming isn’t really a domain occupied only by children, and to keep an adult interested, the difficulty would likely have to be steeper. Well, it turns out my suspicions were right on the money.

After resisting for a number of years, the buzz around Bayonetta was what finally pulled me in. So, one Friday night after the girls (little and big) had gone to bed, I fired up my new toy. And then had to spend time creating an avatar. This was a tad annoying, but due to my habit of trying to make everything just-so and as exact as they can be (a personality trait that is deadly in this world, but more on that in a bit), I duly spent hours choosing what my little electronic self should wear and how he should look. Then came the game. I couldn’t bring myself to choose a difficulty setting lower than ‘normal’ – I still have some pride. It didn’t take long for me to get my ass handed to me. Repeatedly. It didn’t take long to figure something else out. Bayonetta is insane. To my credit, I persevered, refusing to lower the difficulty. I recently completed it. It’s right up my atheist street because it essentially ends with you summoning the queen of hell to punch god into the sun. Like I said, insane. What do I get for my hard work? The chance to do it again on ‘hard’ difficulty. Yeah, cheers for that. I’ll do it though. Or at least I’ll try. And I’ll try because the obsessively anal (snigger) personality trait mentioned above demands that I do.

You see, there is something I was completely unaware of that forms part of the Xbox gaming world, and that is the system of unlocking achievements to earn points. Everyone on Xbox Live has a points balance. Most games have about 50 achievements worth about 1000 points. How could I ever finish a game and not return to it not having earned all of the achievements? Simply put, I can’t. It is the same reason I won’t buy a James Bond film on DVD or Blu Ray. I would have to then get the entire collection. And really, who wants a copy of Moonraker sitting on their shelf? Nobody in their right mind.  Although, the pleasant surprise that I could download a bunch of those old Atari 2600 games, allowing me to remember a little of what it was to be a kid, is worth almost any number of frustrated attempts to earn meaningless achievements.

Anyway. Now I’m stuck in this limbo; unable to stop, and unable to devote enough time to it. Doomed to be forever on the cusp of competence. My little collection of games is growing, as is the number of locked achievements my stupid brain tells me I must earn. I have now introduced myself to the world of Mass Effect (a trilogy of ridiculously deep and endlessly variable games with a sci-fi plot worthy of James Cameron), Project Gotham Racing (in which it is possible to have a racing career spanning years – I cannot stop until I’m number 1), BioShock (quite simply frightening, to the point where I dread putting it on a little) and Gears of War (which basically involves shooting lots of aliens. Well, perhaps that’s a touch harsh, there is more to it. You sometimes blow them up, too). And this is before the fact that you can play these things online against other people, something I’ve only dabbled in a little, due to the embarrassing level of my shiteness. It can still be a great deal of fun, even though the emphasis is on shooting people a little too much. The way all the big releases seem to be shooters is a large part of the reason I never really wanted one in the first place. It’s probably a good thing there are other demands on my time preventing me from becoming a fully fledged gaming addict. I might have ended up like this guy.

Not so grim up North.

We went to Blackpool the weekend just gone. Now, the last time I went to Blackpool I was ten. That’s 22 years ago. In all that time I’ve retained fairly strong memories of it. I remember adoring the Pleasure Beach, loving the Sandcastle, watching the dazzling Illuminations, being on the Piers, up the Tower. Hell, even enjoying a visit to Madame Tussaud’s (although I was too scared to go through the horror exhibit). Feasting on rock, sugar dummies, candyfloss – enough sugar to fell a horse. The donkey rides on the beach. All those things, and probably more that I’ve forgotten. The overwhelming memory is one of joy.

It seemed that as I got older, I became aware of a different type of reputation Blackpool has. An unpleasant place full of stag nights and hen parties, where drunken fools with condoms on their heads rule the streets, a scummy beach and a sea full of, literally, shit. While I accepted that this must be the case and that the Blackpool my ten-year-old self loved so much had gone, I never forgot what it was like to visit that place as a child.

It was, therefore, with some trepidation that we began to approach Blackpool that Saturday morning, invited by family. In my childhood memory I remember seeing the Tower, and feeling the excitement it generated, and a nostalgic echo of that resurfaced upon seeing it on the road this time. Before long, also from some distance out, the Big One came into view. The Big One is around a decade old now, but is still a hugely impressive sight. I remember reading about it when it premiered – the tallest and fastest roller coaster in the world. I adore Alton Towers and love roller coasters, but I could well imagine myself chickening out of going on this beast. It’s no longer the world’s tallest or fastest, but it still holds the record for tallest in Europe.

The views along the promenade are much as I remember them, the Tower and the Central Pier on one side, and the Pleasure Beach, Sandcastle and South Pier on the other. I don’t think I ever went to the North Pier, and it remains a mystery to me. Yes, it’s cheesy, yes it’s typically English, yes the beach really isn’t up to much, but the giddy rush of pleasure I got from revisiting one of my most treasured childhood memories was enough to get me excited all over again, 22 years on.

It was shocking just how much the Pleasure Beach had changed. The Pleasure Beach is the most visited theme park in the UK, surprisingly more popular than Drayton Manor Park, or Alton Towers. When I was last there, the Big Dipper dominated the park, and was by far the highest thing in sight. Standing below it was dizzying, riding it looking below even more so. Now, it is surrounded by more than one ride that makes it look a little fish in a big pond. It doesn’t reach as high as Infusion, and barely stretches a third of the height of the Big One. The Revolution, which once seemed so mighty, is dwarfed and seems rather paltry by comparison to its newer cousins.

The first stop was Nickelodeon Land, newly opened this year, as it was really for Katie we came. Katie’s current favourite TV show is Dora the Explorer, so it was to Dora’s World Voyage we headed first. Rach took Katie on while I stayed with Emily. I did feel quite bad for Emily who had no choice but to sit there and watch everybody else have fun. Katie had been buzzing with excitement for days, so finally getting to try a ride out made her grin from ear to ear. What I’ll remember mostly from this two-day trip is Katie’s blissed-out smile barely leaving her face. As we moved from Spongebob Squarepants-themed rides to a Rugrats-themed log flume, Katie looked like she couldn’t have conceived of a place where it was possible to have so much fun. Meeting Dora left her quite stunned, so we had a bit of a break there, lest we break her and spoil her for good. Also, it started to pelt down. As we walked off, it was quite funny watching a three-piece girl band come on after Dora and with no audience whatsoever due to the pouring rain, launch into Walking on Sunshine. There is almost nowhere in the Pleasure Beach to shelter from the rain, so we all got thoroughly drenched, including poor Emily who, thanks to her absent-minded parents, had no rain cover for her pram.

After drying off and waiting for the rain to ease, we ventured back out, where Katie tried the biggest ride so far, the Flying Machines. They work a bit like the Flying Dutchman, and, obviously, Katie loved them. We moved on to one of a few carousels, which moved rather fast, had horses that were bloody difficult to hold onto and made me very nervous trying to ensure nobody fell off. Katie was oblivious, totally fearless and loving every second, shouting “Giddy up Horsey!” and “This is the best ride ever!” as we flew round.

I had been staring at it all day, and I was eventually persuaded to go on the Big One. The thing about roller coasters is the build up. The nervous excitement as you get pulled up the ramp, and the way your stomach flips as you go over the crest just before plunging down the other side. The Oblivion at Alton Towers is particularly cruel, as it pauses for a moment right on the edge of its vertical drop, just to extend that terror. And then, you’re over and the adrenaline rush comes. It’s addictive. The Big One is so high that much of the joy of the anticipation dissolves, leaving you with a terrifying pit in the middle of your stomach. The climb is horrifying. It lasts forever. The signs don’t make it easier, helpfully informing you when you pass 100 feet, then 200 feet and you just keep climbing. The view is astonishingly spectacular, and is something you would usually only get from the window of a plane or a helicopter. Going over the crest is sickening. Mercifully, it doesn’t pause at all. Then comes the 205-foot plunge and it all makes sense. When the anticipation is that much worse, the adrenaline-fuelled pay-off is that much better. It is incredible. My body was buzzing so much from the release of chemicals that my legs had gone warm. After all of that fearful build up, your stomach doesn’t flip over as much as you expect – not even as much as it does on the Oblivion. The rest of the ride is also very good, including a second crest nowhere near as high as the first, but still higher than anything else in the park. It’s also much longer than I’m used to. The rides at Alton Towers are great, but they are over extremely quickly. The Big One gives you an extended ride after the initial drop.

After taking Katie on a few more rides, we headed back to our hotel. We walked back through the Illuminations, which Katie did enjoy, but as she was already an hour past her bed time she was a little too tired to really enthuse about them. Emily, on the other hand, after a cold and wet day suddenly came alive, and was utterly mesmerised by the sea of flashing colourful lights. The Tower looked particularly impressive.

The next day we took Katie to the Sandcastle, which is the largest indoor water park in the country and just over the road from the Pleasure Beach. Katie loves going to swimming pools and playing in the water, but this was the first time she had seen something like a water slide and that look of surpassing happiness became once again fixed on her face. There are few things that please a parent like that kind of face on your child. We started gently, with the smaller slides, and gradually got to the bigger stuff. Each time we went down a slide, she would jump up and down in excitement and shout “Again, again!” Even Emily could have some fun this time.

Afterwards, Katie was utterly knackered, and we made plans to set off, but not before experiencing some of the other side of Blackpool. We had lunch opposite the Central Pier in ‘family friendly’ pub Uncle Peter Websters, with shit-stained toilets and menu with almost nothing available, which didn’t appear very friendly to our family at all. We then had a quick trip onto the beach, as the weather had been sunny and warm all day, the polar opposite of yesterday’s downpour. Well. Maybe it’s because we were so close to the Central Pier, but the scummy brown foam coating the tidal pools and being washed up on the beach was certainly in line with the reputation Blackpool’s beach has got itself. I do wonder about parents just letting their kids play in the scum pools. I do not lie; there were kids playing in the scum pools.

On the whole, the weekend was as expensive as a week in a caravan park, and at times the Blackpool I hear people talk of in disgusted tones definitely made itself known. However, the memory that will mostly remain is again one of joy – some mine, most Katie’s. And I did come home with some rock and a sugar dummy.

What the hell happened to Aberystwyth?

So we went on holiday for a week to Penbryn, which is on the Welsh coast about 30 miles South of Aberystwyth. The holiday was marvellous and the place is lovely - quiet and relaxing with dramatic scenery and plenty of beaches. On the way there we stopped for a while in Aberystwyth. For a long time, Aberystwyth was a bit like a second home for us because Rach got her degree there and we'd spend most of our weekends there before I went back to my University in Stafford. There's an old assumption that the English aren't fond of the Welsh and that, well, just about everybody hates the English. Anyone with half an ounce of sense can see these for the bollocky generalisations they are and that while there are a few people who act that way, they are in a retarded minority. Which is why YOU SHOULD NOT TAKE THE TITLE OF THIS BLOG POST SERIOUSLY.

Anyway, we came to love Aberystwyth, and while there was one local shop close to the University buildings where the shopkeepers would start talking loudly in Welsh every time you walked in the door, most people were lovely. We loved going out of an evening, we loved spending time on the beach, and generally being together there. I will spare you the mushy romantic bollocks, but it's safe to say that the time we spent there was very special to the both of us.

Cut back to our lunch stop en route to Penbryn. We attempt to park, but the only free space has some pleb standing in it like some kind of statue erected in honour of pricks. We stop and Rach opens the window and politely asks if he's saving the space for someone. I think his unfriendly grunt was supposed to be an affirmative response. Instead of pressing the matter, we just move on - there's no telling what the crunt might do to our car if we argue or force him to move.

We find another car park - the fee is a £3.00 flat rate whether you're staying for 10 minutes, 2 hours or all day. This is infuriating and as it turns out seems to be the same for every car park in Ceredigion. This is bloody ridiculous, but that's another subject, which I won't waste time writing about. We need cash for the car park, so me and Katie head off to find some while Rach and Emily stay with the car. The first place we come to is a Co-op where I buy some chocolate and get some cash back. No fucker in the vicinity smiles at me, Katie or anyone else. It's seems grim and unhappy compared to what I remember. When walking back to the car I see the first car park we tried - the crunt is still standing in the place. Maybe he's mental and not actually holding it for anyone.

While there, we also see a hen party in full flow along the sea front, with a group of girls staggering around and generally acting up. This is at lunch time. It will only take a few more of these to turn our beloved Aberystwyth into Blackpool.

I'm not an idiot. Not completely, anyway. I know that this doesn't mean my Aberystwyth has gone, but just that I got a bit annoyed at some dick standing in a parking space and let it colour the whole visit - after all, why should I have a problem with a group of women celebrating their friend's upcoming marriage? I don't and I got a bit annoyed at myself for getting annoyed at them. If you follow me. It's just that this visit has kind of tarnished the place for me a bit now. I'm going to go back one day I think, just so I can reacquaint myself with the Aberystwyth that my wife and I found and loved when we were teenagers.

An early sign of middle age.

"I used to be 'with it'. Then they changed what 'it' was. Now 'it' seems weird and scary to me. It'll happen to you too." - Abe Simpson.

I'm 32 next month. This feels old. I know to a 50 year old it's nothing - still a shining beacon of youth. I also know to a 20 year old it sounds like the best years of my life are behind me. Being or feeling young or old is relative - there is some truth to that 'only as old as you feel' spiel. Maybe 32 feels old to me because I can remember how it felt to be 17, when the thirties seemed another life away.

Attitudes to certain things change as age increases - I mentioned that already here, but I noticed something this week that is beginning to happen with increasing frequency and is an indication that I'm getting older: I am getting annoyed at the NME.

I've read the NME for years. Loved it for years. For years, it's told me where to find some of the best music on the planet. I always loved the writing; how the writers would describe the music. It's becoming increasingly undeniable to me that the writing is a little youth oriented, and is starting to sound stupid to me. I don't think it's anything to do with the magazine changing, I think it's me. I think I'm getting older, and 'it' is making less and less sense to me, just as Abe Simpson predicted. Take this week's issue. Here are three examples of what I think are supposed to be descriptions of music. "For a man who sings like a dismal hippo, he makes rather a lovely racket." How, pray, is a dismal hippo supposed to sound when he sings? "Like trying to beat out loneliness with a dustbin lid." Um, pardon? Is that anything like The Beatles? "Akin to someone dripping poison in your ear." This is actually supposed to be a recommendation. It is nonsense, and it annoys me because it doesn't tell me how those three songs are supposed to sound. Were I barely five years younger, I don't doubt I'd have loved reading such descriptions of music.

It's not the NME's fault. It just doesn't make sense to me anymore. Guess I'll have to start reading Mojo instead.