It’s a slightly bitter story today, but life’s not always a party. The bad days are what make the good days feel better.
Sometime Christmas feels like it starts earlier every year, pine trees in may, Santa in August and Mariah in June. For me, this year has been different, its been busy at work and we’ve had lots of hassle at home and suddenly it’s only 12 days until Christmas day.
So I thought, what a nice plan it would be if I organised some ice skating with work this year. Lots of people told me they would like to go – saying things like they always wanted to go and nobody will go with them. So I decided ‘I can solve this problem’ and i found a date when we could go. I even emailed a few of them before I arranged it to check they wanted to. A chance to emulate Torville and Dean -yes please.
And yet, here we are. We supposed to be going tomorrow. I’ve bought my ticket and I’m ready. And gradually the people have been dropping out. But they don’t say, I can’t go, not at first. They try and soften the blow in the most obvious ways. Message 1 – ‘can I just check how many people are going?’, Message 2 – ‘I can’t go’. Or the classic – message 1 – ‘I think I might be coming down with a sickness bug’ message 2 ‘I can’t go’.
So tomorrow, it may be just me. However, I can’t take this personally. Everyone has been really busy and I understand. I’m gonna make the best of it, and maybe someone will turn up. This ultimate opportunity for me to have a broken leg for Christmas, and I’m not gonna give it up.
I’m also gonna try and bring the stream with me. I’m not sure how happy they will be about me recording but I’ll give it a try if I can. And if you can’t come to stream – remember to make a lame excuse beforehand!
On the slightly brighter side, Amazon gave me a £20 refund on my air fryer.
Month: December 2023 Page 2 of 3
It’s hard to keep romance alive these days, because of our busy lives, balancing the demands of children and of course with me being generally unattractive. However, I’m here to share the solution – lockdown!
Thanks to the dubious pleasures of homeworking, no longer do I just see Mrs Rad for a few minutes in the morning before it gets light and a few minutes in the dark after work. We get to see each other in the day. I admit daylight doesnt really help the attractiveness thing, but working from home allows us to spend a litlle more time with each other. And sometimes we even get to go on little dates at lunchtime. Which is what we did today – and the location of choice for this date? Tesco’s Cafe.
Tesco is a modern marvel. The most ubiquitous supermarket in the UK, it thrives on it’s general ok-ness. The prices are ok, not the cheapest but not too bad. The decor – uninspiring. The produce? Unremarkable. The staff? Would do anything not to be there.
But it’s available, and it’s close to my house. And they have a little cafe that is the perfect home for my little date with Mrs Rad. She ordered the food while I did a bit of shopping. She sent me a photo of the menu for me to choose what I wanted. When we sat down, I discovered we’d ordered the same thing – Fish and Chips – proving that true love never dies. The only difference was that Mrs Rad had pushed the boat out and had mushy peas, whereas I had garden peas. Psychologists will have a field day analysing what that means about us – two peas in a pod? One squished tho.
The chips were chonky – hom nom nom, but the fish not so much. I was impressed by the amound of care that had gone in to finding one that was as thin and tasteless as the one I had today.
And the best thing about dates in supermarkets – you can go and get large bags of special offer chocolates for pudding.
Its been roughly 3 years since COVID started, and yet it’s legacy lives on in my life in the form of my mini lunchtime dates.
So I’ve broken the world record for the slowest christmas tree decoration. On Saturday night I built the tree and put the lights on it and today, three days later we finished it off with the rest of the decorations.
Why, well our water is still broken and we have been trying to figure it out with the building owner. As you can imagine it’s been a bit of a hassle, and hasn’t left much time for christmas decorations. The issue is essentially that the pump that pushes water around the buidling is broken. The owners and their agents claim it takes them a while to get quotes for a new one whereas we as residents just keep saying that WE NEED RUNNING WATER. Fortunately, I guess, we haven’t been completely without water, it goes on and off sporadically, usually lasting for a few hours when someone resets the system, and they have also delivered us a few bottles of water. Even so we remain frustrated, because it’s 2023 and these problems ought to have an immediate fix.
Tomorrow is another day, maybe it will be fixed then. I’m learning a new song to try and encourage the water supply – it’s raining men!
There are many great examples of domes in the world – the dome on top of St Pauls Cathedral, the Superdome in Louisiana and perhaps greatest of them all, the dome in a garden in West Bromwich where I ate my lunch today.
It was great, but we walked into a buzzing full restaurant of people eating their Sunday lunches, only to be led outside past the bathrooms and into a little garden containing 3 domed greenhouses. It was a surprise, but super cool. The dome was built from hexagonal glass panels and inside was a single table with 8 chairs and a heater. It was also hi-tech, we had a button which was to be used to call the waitress and a Bluetooth speaker, which provided the dulcet tones of Wham to accompany our meal. Sir Christopher Wren himself could not have imagined a finer place to eat an Italian.
If I’m honest, these domes were probably more intended for summer events. It was a rainy day but it had stopped raining by the time we got ther, although I would have been interested to have the experience of eating outside during a rainstorm. The other minor issue was the low winter sun meant it was a little hard to see at times. Fortunately it was England so that problem didn’t last for long.
We were there to celebrate the birthday of Mrs Rad’s mom, so they had booked this special outside pod as a surprise. The food was super nice. There was a normal Italian menu, so pizzas and pastas, but also a set menu of traditional Sunday lunch. I assume that was to cater for the stubborn English crowd, unless Yorkshire puddings are also a Tuscan delicacy.
I had pasta – because when in Rome, and in a dome, you should do as the romans do. It was pretty filling, even more so ones I had the chocolate brownie we had for pudding. I was quite taken by the predicament of the servers bringing us all this food. They came out of the restaurant elegantly, holding high the beautifully presented food, and then placed it on a table outside the Dome. They then had to unzip the dome in order to squeeze in a pass out the plates, then shut the zip as quickly as possible, giving the whole thing more of a camping in a tent aesthetic.
I love these eccentric suprises, and I really enjoyed this meal. It is definitely in the top 3 domes I have eaten in.
So I’m supposed to be shy, introverted rad. I sit in the corner at parties, I struggle to make eye contact, I’m even scared to make a phone call.
But sometimes I do something wild on whim.
And that’s how I ended up on a solo coach trip around Europe with a tent.
When I was 20, I took a job in Middlesbrough. It was a ‘placement year’ from university. If you don’t know what that is, it’s a year in the middle of university where you work for a bit in order to try and pay off some of your student debt. I used to earn £160 per week, and it still felt like the most money I’d ever had!
Because I had almost no expenses, I was able to save a bit – I think I saved nearly £1000, maybe less, and I bought my ‘Eurolines Pass’ 30 day ticket for £149.
In hindsight this was crazy, it was me and a rucksack with a tiny tent and sleeping bag in it. But off I went.
Did I mention that most of the coaches were overnight, so I ‘saved’ money by no having to buy accommodation, but it also meant that I saw less than I thought I would because I was so sleepy.
I seem to remember I spent the first few days in Bordeaux, in a campsite near the beach. From there I headed north to Amsterdam, I think, and then on into Scandinavia where I went to Copenhagen, Gothenburg and Stockholm.
Then I randomly returned to the UK, to refresh myself, I think I had been a bit unwell. Not a surprise. But to finish off in style, I took a 24 hour coach trip from London to Prague, stayed for a couple, of days and came back.
However, for the life of me I can’t remember much about these places. The standard trick was to take a double decker bus tour of the city, because it did the touristing for me, and because I needed to make more buses. I also remember that I’d never really been to Mac Donald before, so It’s definitely how I learnt to eat chicken Mc nuggets,
Ok so, I’ve discovered that 30 days of essay is much harder than 30 days of 5k. It would be so much easier to run to the moon than to have the discipline to write a piece each day. However, it’s late at night and I’m trying. Today has been a hard day, so much stuff going on. Work was hard, home is hard and I’m exhausted anyway, so I’ve just wanted to sleep. Also they’ve changed Discord. But you know, I’ve finally built the Christmas tree. The lights are connected by WiFi, in the most unnecessary but cool Christmas thing ever!! They are currently showing the Italian flag, because Radling 2 wanted it – because we had pizza! It’s so much ‘like father like son’. Hopefully we’ll get some chance to do some fuller decoration tomorrow I need my radish Christmas house. We were supposed to go to London tomorrow, but with everything going on in our lives that’s looking difficult, so hopefully we will have a nice family day at home. So that’s it, that’s the update.
Some days are hard, some days are easy. Bring on tomorrow.
Streaming is weird. This is obviously true because most of us are weirdos. But what I mean more is that it is very unlike anything else in life and can create a lot of moments that are unique to streaming.
So last night we had a great stream, playing the game My Time at Sandrock. We definitely had a wild ride with the character Earnest, all in the space of a single cutscene. Firstly we were thinking he was possible marriage material, then we thought that he was a criminal and finally we watched him destroyed by a 9 year old. And then we never saw him again, he left our lives as quickly as he entered.
But my favourite experience is when we raid somebody, and we get to take the stream to a random person that I don’t know at all on the other side of the world. This was the case last night, where I was just able to raid a streamer from the US who was playing Sandrock. They were really friendly and we had a lovely chat about the game. I think these random connections are one of the nicest things – the person doesn’t have to be anything like me, but we can still just have a little interaction and it’s super sweet.
Many apologies but this is another one where I’m moaning. But I promise this one is super relatable and it does have a happy ending.
So we decided that for Christmas we would get a new TV for the living room as the old one is dying. And we’ve been really happy with having a cheap home cinema projector up to now, so we thought we’d take advantage of Black Friday sales and get a better model.
I found a good one online and I found it discounted by about £500 by buying from a place in Germany, that also has a UK front end. It would get delivered as quickly as Amazon, but thats fine – it’s for Christmas anyway – so there was plenty of time for them to lose it in transit, break it, play tennis with it etc.
A couple of days went by after I ordered it and there was no information – no handy ‘we are preparing your order’ – nothing. I wondered if I’d wasted a whole load of money. So I decided to email them and I got a reply saying they’d had a busy weekend and they would try and send it out tomorrow.
And then another day went by and they said they’d send it out the next day. Which they did.
But it was on a slow shipping, so it said it wouldn’t come until the 7th. I checked the shipping information every 5 minutes, beaucse that’s a surefire way to speed things up, but it never changed.
And then finally this morning, the 6th, it did is said it would be out for delivery today. Hurrah! And then it even gave a time, saying that it would be delivered between 12:50 and 14:50.
One of the nice things about working from home, is that Mrs Rad and I get to spend a bit more time together. And sometimes we can go out for lunch and talk about life. And also give pret a manger £20 for a couple of salad leaves with yellow dressing. And that’s what we did today, being very careful to make sure that we were back by 12:50 for the parcel.
So you can guess the next bit. Got back home to check when the parcel was going to arrive and I had a message on my phone saying that they had tried to deliver it at 12:40!
Fortunately, or maybe unfortunately, they decided that instead of taking it back to the depot, they would deliver it to a petrol station.
Now this was a heavy package and quite large, so I had to go and collect it with an Ikea trolley. Fortunately it all went well from here. They took a photograph of my passport and gave me the package, and I dragged it over a mile home in the freezing temperatures and now it is set up in my house.
Hi I’m an airfryer. I used to just live in a box on a shelf in the Amazon warehouse, waiting for someone to buy me. And one day it happened, I got taken down off a shelf and into a van, to be delivered to someones house where I could make new and exciting recipes.
I waited while they uwrapped me, removed the packages and had a quick look and then they placed me down, pride of place in their kitchen. Rad’s kitchen.
Part of me was extremely proud to be in Rad’s kitchen, I’ve watched his streams and know them to be highly entertaining, with a unique brand of brilliance and wit.
However, I also thought he could take a joke, so I decided to mess about with all the food I cooked for him.
First the chicken, I burnt a little hold in the top of the chicken – not enough to make it go completely bad – but just annoying.
I also burnt the chips (fries) – however, hard he tried to do a good job of them. And the veg.
Rad really needs to read a cookery book cos I’m catching him out too easily with this.Tales of an air fryer
Hi I’m an airfryer. I used to just live in a box on a shelf in the Amazon warehouse, waiting for someone to buy me. And one day it happened, I got taken down off a shelf and into a van, to be delivered to someones house where I could make new and exciting recipes.
I waited while they uwrapped me, removed the packages and had a quick look and then they placed me down, pride of place in their kitchen. Rad’s kitchen.
Part of me was extremely proud to be in Rad’s kitchen, I’ve watched his streams and know them to be highly entertaining, with a unique brand of brilliance and wit.
However, I also thought he could take a joke, so I decided to mess about with all the food I cooked for him.
First the chicken, I burnt a little hold in the top of the chicken – not enough to make it go completely bad – but just annoying.
I also burnt the chips (fries) – however, hard he tried to do a good job of them. And the veg.
Rad really needs to read a cookery book cos I’m catching him out too easily with this.
I don’t know what I went to today. It was kind of a community christmas song evening. Except that it wasn’t. It was in a huge hall and there was a choir of about 50 and an audience of about 700 people.
There were 5 musicians, but not quite the standard affair – 2 pianos, one guitar, some drums and a guy playing the bongos.
It was mostly targetted at an older group – playing songs from the Beatles, Diana Ross, Cliff Richard etc. The epitome of this was 5 guys perfoming a song who they said that their combined age was 400 years!
But then suddenly it wasn’t like that, and a group of 18 year a olds appeared and did hip-hop to a backing track, with the occasional bit of rapping.
And then we were back to the older generation – singing some christmas songs. Some old some new. Some good, some bad, some terrible!
There was also a bit of audience participation, so we got to blast out ‘Hark the Herald’ and other classics.
I used to go to this kind of thing and feel sad that I wasn’t involved. But thanks to the stream and all you guys that come, I get to perform for you 3-4 times a week and I really treasure that.
But the moment of the night was when a random 70+ year old guy appeared and did his solo – Country Roads. I really hope he did it for the memes.