I seem to have had a cold forever. Something is going round at work and everyone is catching it, some people have had it for a month. I thought a walk by the sea may help (I already tried healthy food and drugs). When I was at uni I lived right by the sea. Even though we lived in damp, cold, mice infested student accommodation, where the heating was always broken and the walls were decorated with mould, I never got a cold or any other illness. I didn’t even used to get hangovers. So maybe being 18 contributed to this, but I like to think it was the sea air coming across 8000 miles of Atlantic Ocean freshness.

So I drove across the New Forest down to Highcliffe and walked along the sea front. It was freezing and raining, definitely what I think of as the British sea side in winter. Normally there are people surfing around here. The water was really calm though, so no hot surfer girls, just people walking their dogs.

On the way back I was passing through Lymington and remembered they had a really good fish and chip shop. So I stopped for an early tea. I don’t think fish & chip shops ever use newspaper wrapping any more, or even fake newspaper wrapping. They did have these cool paper bags though.

Sitting in the cold and rain, eating (90% fat) fish and chips. I think I may have found a cure to a cold.

I really hate having my eyes tested, it’s much worse than anything that happens at the dentist. It was probably the really scary Irish school nurse we had at primary school when I was 6 that put me off. She only came to see us for our yearly lice and eye inspection and if we were really lucky, for an injection of some variety administered through a blunt needle. These days I don’t have to worry so much about lice, but my glasses were starting to break, the screws kept coming loose, so I took a deep breath and booked an appointment at the opticians. It went something like this.

Optician: “We haven’t seen you for four years; you should really come every two”.

Me: “Oh yeah, well, you see, um, well really I’m just here as my glasses are broken and I need some new ones, my eyes haven’t changed though, these glasses still work”.

Optician: “Well we will do a test, they have probably changed in four years.”

Me:”OK.”

Optician: “Do you have any hobbies?”

Me: (thinking what, why does he want to know that): “Err no, not really.”

Optician does all his tests, looks at my eyes with various implements, gets me to read stuff, look in one corner, then the other corner, shoots some air into my eyes etc…

Optician: “Hmmm, you work with computers then? How many hours a day do you look at a screen for?”

Me: “Errrr, 15 or so I guess.”

“Optician: “Per DAY?! You are lucky to be able to see at all! Have you any long term medical conditions?”

Me: “Well I have the odd bout of hypochondria, other than that, no.”

Optician: “Well it looks like you have slightly high cholesterol, it may cause a problem in 30 years or so.”

Me: “Oh don’t worry, I probably wont last that long anyway, we’re all gonna get bird flu next year anyway.”

Optician: “Well you also might have high blood pressure, do you suffer from stress?”

Me: “Yes, but normally only when my eyes are being prodded and poked by someone.”

Optician: “Well with your job, you should probably exercise more, when was the last exercise you had?”

Me: “I did a five mile run/two mile swim this morning.”

Optician: “You said, you didn’t have any hobbies, I filled your form in wrong now.”

It’s no wonder I don’t like going to the opticians, I only went with a screw loose in my glasses and I come home with stress, high blood pressure, cholesterol and possible bird flu next year. Oh I did get some new glasses in the end too and I was right, my eyes hadn’t changed. I’m never sure what to make of all the health craze stuff that is everywhere at the moment. I mean I know I eat crap, but I do a fair amount of exercise and I’m probably the least stressed person I’ve ever met. Nobody lasts for ever and there are probably loads of things that are bad for us (like Blogging) that we just haven’t worked out are bad for us, yet.

I was coming out of the Solent Hotel tonight after a swim and there were loads of people hanging around in Leeds Utd tracksuits. I was thinking it was a bit strange for so many grownups to be in full football kit. I held the door open for someone with a large sports bag, “oh you look familiar”, I was thinking… “wait, you’re Neil Sullivan, the Leeds goalkeeper”. Outside was the Leeds team bus and at the bottom of the steps was Ken Bates, the chairman. He was shaking every player’s hand as they got off the coach and it sounded like all the players were saying, “Hello Mr Chairman”.

It sounded odd, I would have thought they’d call him Ken, or at worse Mr Bates, but Mr Chairman?

Now that we have several ways of measuring our office temperature, I thought I’d look at the external temperature too. I think it’s all this talk of a really harsh winter ahead in the UK that is making me obsess about the weather. So anyway, I ordered this nifty thermometer that you stick on the outside of your window.

It was quite difficult to get to the outside of our office window. We’re partially below ground level and so have a large wall covered by really thick bushes gently sloping down to our office window. After climbing the fence, dropping off the wall and making my way through the undergrowth I was able to reach the window. A group of colleagues helpfully stood there saying, “you’re gonna get in trouble, did you not read those health and safety guidelines” and I did get a nice selection of thorns and twigs attached to me. Anyway, task completed we now have an outdoor thermometer stuck to the window (currently reading 3 degrees C).

Looking at this picture, they really do need to clean our office windows, but I think it’s just too difficult for the maintenance people to get to them.

OK, now it’s cold. I had been worrying that it was unseasonably warm, but last night it finally went cold. This morning I got up, the path outside was icey and I had to scrape, and then sit in my car for ten minutes while it warmed up and defrosted. I’m sure I could probably do something productive while I wait for a small gap (how big a gap do you really need anyway?) in the windscreen to defrost, but I tend to just sit there staring at the dashboard. I like how my Honda dashboard has italic lettering, it makes you think you’re going faster than you really are.

I bought some fresh pineapple from Tesco on the way home from work (ok already, I know I’m lazy for buying the pre-cut, pre-washed version). It comes in a packet with one of those spoon/fork implements, the ones shaped like a spoon, but with prongs on. I noticed the packet called it a “spork”. Spork, I think I like that a lot.