Ceremonial visit

I've spent the last few days cleaning the house, granted I do this most weeks but this weekend my parents are coming to visit so naturally I need to step my game up.  As much as I hate having to clean (hey it'll all only get dirty again) I almost appreciate it when we get visitors because otherwise this place would turn in to a pig sty.  Admittedly it's normally a horses tack room seeing as my wife Elizabeth and I own two horses but it's still possible for it to go down hill.

Now back when I was a kid, my mum would occasionally ask me (usually when I left the house in a mess) what a prospective girlfriend would think about my untidiness, little did she realise that the answer was so simple, marry someone more messy than me!  You can tell where Elizabeth spends most of her time because there are little nests of stuff around where she regularly frequents.  Most of the time I really don't care, right up until a weekend when my mum is visiting and I'm left in charge of clearing up, because I know some of the stuff in these piles has been there since the last time they came.

Anyone who has met her will know that my mother is a formidable woman, I'm 6'4" tall and she's only 5" shorter than I am, not only that but I think she may have been a drill sergeant in a former life, if there's one person on this planet you don't mess with it's my mum, well ok I do, but I'm her son and have spent many years finding the line between smart arsed witty banter and getting smacked for being glib.  So it's not normally just her coming to see her youngest son, it also turns in to a formal inspection.  This means anything that's not up to muster will get commented on which makes an untidy house a big deal.  I already know my hair will come under scrutiny as I didn't get round to getting it cut this week and the garden will be brought up as we've barely touched it in the 10 years we've lived here so getting called on something that's not really my fault gets me worked up a bit.

Reading this you may be thinking that I'm not especially enamoured with my family and you know something, you'd be dead wrong.  I love both my wife and my mother dearly, not to mention my dad, brother, cousins, aunties & uncles.  I actually consider myself to be lucky to have such a nice happy family free from divorces and other issues that other people seem to have.  As far as I'm concerned nobody is perfect, we all have faults and foibles in our character that could be improved.  I could probably have an argument with my wife about tidying up, or tell my mum where she can go if she doesn't like how I live but it would only cause more problems than it would solve.  And so I clean.

Thanks for the memory

So why is it that I can remember exactly how to do everything in The Secret of Monkey Island,
I can recite lines from innumerable films,
I can remember what song comes next on countless albums,
and the road layout of my home town in Wolverhampton which I haven't lived in or visited in around 10 years,
I can tell you how to get a Moltres in pokemon,
or the best line to take around Laguna Seca on scores of video games....
I can remember server names, IP addresses, passwords, physical locations of equipment I installed years ago,
I can telly you how to do pretty much any quest in World of Warcraft from levels 1 - 60 on both the horde and the alliance side,

But can never remember the names of some of my family members (ok, maybe not the immediate ones but the ones I see at weddings and funerals)  I mean I'm related to them and have been since the day I was born!  Surely that information is more important to me than some of that other stuff.

F1 Grand Prix - Singapore

Introduction over, now on to the real first post.

The Grand Prix is now over and entertaining it was too.  I do enjoy watching Formula one, I find the mixture of speed, noise and glamour intoxicating, plus with Singapore being a night race it really adds to the sense of theatre, not to mention this has been one of the closest seasons in history with 5 drivers still challenging each other for the world champion ship and only a few races to go.

And now on to my point.  As an Englishman I'm naturally cheering on my fellow countrymen Lewis Hamilton and Jenson Button, two very different driving styles and both are exceptional.  Of the two Lewis is the more exciting one to watch, he is far more aggressive and creates passing opportunities, when he succeeds he is applauded for his skill, when it goes wrong he is slammed for making a careless mistake.  The difference is only a hairs breadth in reality, but one side of the line has him praised as a driving legend, the other as a reckless fool.  Today's overtaking manoeuvre is a prime example, he saw an opportunity and went for it, unfortunately he hit Mark Webber and it ended his race.

Jenson on the other hand has a smooth driving style, he is far less likely to make a mistake and the car will get to the end of the race in better condition than Lewis' but he tends not to overtake people, instead he will try to find a way to get in to some clear air and just drive better than other people.  Not very interesting to watch but nobody can argue that he isn't a capable driver.  On demanding tracks where the reliability of the car is tested, he is more likely to reach the end and score points.

So two very different people with very different styles, but both have the same issue.  The talent that they are renowned for, draws both adoration and insult purely on whether it earns them victory.  We the viewing public are rather a fickle bunch really.

How do

Greetings all and welcome to my blog, I have been reading other peoples blogs for a little while now and thought I'd put up some stuff of my own.  While I have nothing in particular in mind I will from time to time have something I want to say on various subjects, so I will say it here.

So who am I?  At time of writing I'm a 32 year old IT engineer who works in the North East of England, fairly easy going and content to bumble through life without too much drama.  I like to look at both sides of an argument rather than just declare that one side is right and that's the end of it and find humour in just about everything.

The title of my blog is the name of a book by Douglas Adams, a man who's first name I share and who's writing I love, my Avatar is "The Guy" from a Disturbed Album cover and there is now only 20 minutes until the start of the F1 singapore Grand Prix.

That'll do for now I think, so until next time, have fun.