It was 1999, and I was starting university.  I had terrible dress sense; a velour luminous orange v-neck Cotton Traders shirt was the worst offender, usually accompanied with black shiny plastic-effect trousers.  Inexplicably I was single.  I had no mobile phone, and no computer.  I had a scrap of paper in my wallet with the mobile phone numbers of a couple of my more fortunate friends, which I’d have to take to a nearby phone booth to call them.  Alternatively I would go and knock on their door.  I met a pencil-necked geek called Gareth Evans.  I thought he was a nerd.  I used to pass him offensive and sometimes threatening doodles in lectures.

In November ‘99 I got a red Ericsson T10 mobile phone.  It had a flip-down cover which I though was cool, and I could type in my own ringtones.  At the time this was just out of this world fucking amazing.  I’m not sure how people ever coped at university before mobile phones.  I mean, how the fuck did you know where everyone was all the time?

Ericsson T10

In my second year my sister loaned me the money to buy a computer.  I had no internet, but I didn’t need it.  I could type up my essays in my room, save them to a floppy disk and go to the uni’s IT Suite to print them off.  I was given a warning by the university’s Head of IT for printing out naked pictures of Shannon Elizabeth.  Big Steve and I would sit in my room playing Championship Manager 2 and Settlers III: Gold Edition, or we’d sit in his room and watch the wrestling videos his mum used to tape off SKY and mail to him.  Inexplicably, I was single.

Christmas 2000 Gareth Evans organised a social; a sit-down meal in as close as Loughborough got to a nice restaurant.  The dress code was shirt and tie.  My mate Andy and I turned up in Elvis costumes to try and piss Evans off.  By now Evans and I had a love:hate thing going on.  I loved trying to wind him up.

"Alvin Stardust" and "Fat Elvis," December 2000

In my final year I finally got the internet, which opened up a world of endless pornography and the opportunity to download thousands upon thousands of songs from Kazaa for free.  Communication was now primarily through a little thing called MSN Messenger.  I met whatshername (not via the internet, I must add).

Evans wouldn’t share a house with me in the final year, and whenever we did group coursework he stoutly refused to let me into his group.  He was still a nerd, which is why I always wanted to be in his group.  He however, knew I was lazy and disruptive.  To wind him up, during a Management Accounting group coursework presentation we made references to him being a sex offender and a homosexual.  He took it well in fairness (no gay pun intended).  As part of the same group coursework we also left our friend, dressed only in vest, pants and afro, in a field to the mercy of a farmer and his dog. 

Click on the picture to see this man, standing in a field in vest and pants

One day on MSN Messenger, Evans and I started discussing music.  And we bonded.  I recommended Gold by Ryan Adams (for which I must give credit to Big Steve for originally recommending to me).  Evans loved it.  We both, to a certain extent, became obsessed.  Me probably more so.  I bought everything Ryan Adams I could find and downloaded everything I couldn’t.  For our first Valentine’s Day, whatshername bought me the sheet music for Gold, and I learnt to play the whole album, especially loving ‘Firecracker,’ ‘New York, New York’ and ‘Wildflowers.’

A few years later Evans and I were still in touch on e-mail, still chatting about music, usually in work time.  However did people talk aimless rubbish with people hundreds of miles away during work hours before the advent of e-mail?  He bunked a day off work (the first time ever, he told me, although he did sort of get his boss’s permission first) and flew from Jersey to Nottingham to come with me, Andy and Big Steve to see Ryan Adams at Rock City.  It was fucking ace.  Afterwards we drank ridiculously large G&Ts and trashed my flat.  Whatshername hit the roof when she came home to find the place stinking of brandy and cigars and her computer fucked due to the large amount of porn we’d downloaded onto it.

A couple of months later Evans sent me a short e-mail saying: “Buy the album ‘I Sincerely Apologise for All the Trouble I’ve Caused’ by David Ford.”  Bizarrely I remember the first time I ever played it; in the car on the way to ASDA with whatshername.  “Is this a man or a woman?” she asked during the opening track.  “It’s a man, I think,” I replied, unsure.  It was the second track — ‘State Of The Union’ — that grabbed me by the balls.  And another obsession began.

The first time I saw David Ford was at the Sugarmill in Stoke.  Evans was supposed to come but had to pull out due to a strenuous-sounding work jolly in Barcelona.  I had liked Ford up to this point, but was captivated by his live performance.  I don’t care if that sounds gay; he was brilliant.

I went to see him a couple more times, once at the Rescue Rooms in Nottingham, and at Birmingham for his annual ‘Milk & Cookies’ charity gig, where he played a host of stuff including covers and requests.  He sat at the piano and played the full version of Bat Out Of Hell.  This elevated him to the status of God in my eyes.

When the following year’s Milk & Cookies gigs were announced, an auction started online for the opportunity to perform live on stage with Ford.  Long story short I ended up winning the auction to perform at the Eastbourne Hippodrome on my 28^th Birthday.  My song: ‘Firecracker’ by Ryan Adams.

December 13^th 2008 was the best day ever.  Whatshername and I went down with Andy and his wife Rachelle.  We went First Class on the train, had a Mexican and some beers.  Andy filmed a documentary in the style of X-Factor, which to this day I still can’t convert into a format Youtube likes.  Eastbourne was cold and as windy as any place I’ve ever been.  At five o’clock I went to meet Ford and rehearse the song.  I was shitting it.  The auction had been caveated with “Mr Ford reserves the right to change your song choice and your part in the performance if it’s likely to comprise the quality of the show” so I knew I had to be not terrible.  The guy who had won the auction the year before had played ‘All I Want For Christmas Is You’ on piano with Ford singing, and it sounded brilliant.  I was feeling the pressure of expectation.

In the Hippodrome I met Ford and watched him rehearse and soundcheck with his band.  When they called me up on stage Ford just handed me a guitar and said, “I’ll count you in and we’ll just see how it goes, OK?”  That was it; no pissing around.  We ran through the song about five times to iron out any creases.  The band were fantastic, and really put me at ease.

“OK,” Ford said, “the plan is that we’ll play the first half, have a break and then I’ll call you up at some point in the second half.  So you can enjoy the first half and the break but then shit yourself through the second half.”

Click on the picture for my M&C duet

Now, I know it isn’t perfect.  I started flat because I couldn’t hear my own voice over the instruments (I suspect they’d turned my microphone right down, perhaps rightly), but it was probably the best experience of my life, singing one of my favourite ever songs in front of about 700 people. 

And if you’re wondering about the hat: in the first half of the show Ford had worn a cowboy hat while playing Beck’s ‘Devil’s Haircut.’  I decided I wanted to wear it, so I picked it up on my way onto the stage.  It seemed appropriate for a Ryan Adams song.

After the show we wandered aimlessly around Eastbourne for a while, eventually ending up in Wetherspoons.  We ordered posh ladyboys: Leffe, Baileys and G&Ts.  Andy did his impression of Clyde from Any Which Way But Loose.  At one o’clock the pub called last orders and we got up to leave.  As we stepped outside Rachelle noticed someone knocking and waving through the window; it was Gary ‘G-Man’ Page — Ford’s drummer.  In quite the most surreal ending to the evening we stood outside chatting with Ford and his band for about half an hour about all kinds of nonsense. 

Evans — unable to make it due to a tricky commute from Dubai, and who’d still not seen Ford live at this point — had asked me to ask Ford where we should go for his upcoming stag do.  He suggested “something different… like a football tournament in Barcelona or coal mining in Wales.  And do it the night before the wedding.  Not enough people do that these days.”  We said our goodbyes and went back to our £35-a-night hotel on the seafront to drink Baileys, warm lager and red wine until the small hours.  It was — and without meaning to sound like an 8-year-old’s report on what I did for my holidays — the best birthday EVER.

Eight months later it was Evans’ wedding day.  I had made the transition from annoying cock at uni to best man.  I had got hideously drunk on Evans’ stag do and lost my glasses.  The wedding was great and my speech went down pretty well, but the best part was the surprise the bride — Erica — had organised for the groom.  After the speeches I told the guests that the bride and groom were going to make their way to the dance floor for their first dance, and they should follow.  I ran ahead to give the surprise his cue.

The bride and groom walked to the dance floor to the sound of David Ford at the piano playing their song, ‘Song For The Road’.  Evans looked over at the piano, back at Erica then back to the piano, proper double-take style.  “He looks like David Ford,” he whispered.  “It is David Ford,” she said back.  “Did you know about this?”  “Yes Dear, I organised it.”

At the end of the set Evans asked for an encore.  Later he would confide in me that he wished he’d thought of an obscure album track that he really wanted to hear, but all he could think of was to ask Ford to play Firecracker.  With me.  Feigning reluctance I got up there and played the song.  Again, I bloody loved it. 

Click on the picture

Afterwards Andy and I plucked up the courage to ask Ford if he wouldn’t mind just saying a few words into Andy’s video camera.  We’d made a kind of documentary in the style of X-Factor, we said, and we wondered if he’d like to do a Simon Cowell-y type critique of my performance.  He smiled, “I think I’d be good at that…”

Click the link to see 

I’ll never be a rock star but I’ll be able to tell my grandkids that I sang and played my guitar on stage a couple of times.  I’ll ask if they want to see the DVD.  They’ll scoff and ask me to explain what a DVD is.  I’ll explain it’s something we used to watch films on in the olden days before telepathic holograms and I’ll say, “You think that sounds shit, let me tell you about my red Ericsson T10…”

I get up, put on my dressing gown, grab a towel from the banister and walk into the bathroom.  I have a wee-wee.  I only shave on Mondays and Wednesdays, unless I have an important meeting with some important or a presentation or something, but this is rare and avoided at all costs.

If it’s a shave day I shave, then shower.  Otherwise I get straight in the shower.  Hair, face, armpits, ‘bits,’ feet, always in that order.  I get out, dry myself, ruffle my hair in the mirror (if I don’t I’ll have shit hair — well, shitter than usual — all day).  Dressing gown on, I put my towel on the banister and go downstairs, put the kettle on.  Two mugs; me on the right, whatshername on the right.  A teaspoon of coffee in each.  A splash of cold water in mine, milk in whatshername’s.

Two slices of toast in the toaster.  Take whatshername’s coffee upstairs.  Back in the kitchen I wait for toast then spread with margarine and marmite.  I take my breakfast and sit on the right-hand side of the sofa, put on BBC Breakfast hoping Susanna Reid (below, right) is presenting.  Watch until Chris Hollins (hopefully) finishes his sports report.  Upstairs.  Brush teeth, do hair.  Curse shit hair.  Get dressed, go downstairs.  Lunch (if made), laptop bag, in the car by 7:50.

It’s my morning routine, my comfort.

This morning whatsername decided to get up early and go for a swim.  I walked into the kitchen to find her making coffee (she put sugar in mine — FFS — but that’s beside the point), and I just stood there.  My routine had been shattered and I wasn’t sure what to do next.  But I waited, made my breakfast, took the coffee from the side and got on with things.

We all have out daft little routines.  I’m sure I’m not the only person who has a morning routine, or who likes the writing on all his CDs to be the right way up (am I?).  I know I’m not the only person who has an order of preference for his boxer shorts (as @iainobrien -  delightfully confirmed: “A teams, B teams, and the real reserve grade bad boys”).

We have these little routines and quirks because we all have in some way or another some autistic tendencies.  All of us.  But while the ‘neurotypicals’ among us will deal with these disruptions and think of another way around them, some people have behaviours and routines so ritualistic and pervasive that they ruin their lives.  Their thought processes are so rigid and inflexible that any deviation can throw them into a violent rage or inconsolable sulk.  This is just one of the many examples of autistic spectrum disorder (ASD).

April 2010 — which, admittedly has pretty much been and gone — is the first ever National Autism Awareness Month, and has seen the broadcast of shows like ‘Young, Autistic and Stagestruck’ and ‘The Autistic Me.’  As entertaining, enlightening and emotional as these shows are, they barely scratch the surface of the problems in the lives of the characters. 

The cast of Young, Autistic & Stagestruck

I can’t and won’t attempt to explain ASD in any detail, but it’s something that really interests me.  And for Christ’s sake don’t read this and think autism is just about rigidity of thought.  It’s an incredibly complicated subject, which good old faithful lazy man’s best friend Wikipedia defines as “a disorder of neural development characterized by impaired social interaction and communication, and by restricted and repetitive behavior.”

‘Young, Autistic and Stagestruck’ demonstrates just how wide the autistic spectrum is, showing us a ‘high functioning’ autistic twelve year-old who is exceptionally intelligent and eloquent but uncontrollably angry and aggressive, in the same group as an eleven year-old who can barely speak and, in last night’s show, soiled himself and smeared excrement on his chair.

I take my metaphorical hat off to every parent and carer who deals with people with autism, and I hope that National Autism Awareness Month raises all the awareness it can.

Although NAAM is almost over, try and catch one of the many programs on autism on TV at the moment.  Read “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time” by Mark Haddon.  Watch the film ‘Adam’ starring the brilliant Hugh Dancy and the quite lovely Rose Byrne, or the BBC drama “After Thomas” (based on the novel ‘A Friend Like Henry’ by Nuala Gardner) starring the equally lovely ‘Ashes To Ashes’ star Keeley Hawes.

It’s such a fascinating and complicated topic on which academics, psychologists, doctors, parents and, erm, former Playboy models regularly disagree.  It is unclear as to the causes, if any, of ASD, be they genetic, environmental or developmental.  One thing’s for sure, some of the brightest and most important individuals have been linked with or rumoured to have shown characteristics of ASD, including Bill Gates, Albert Einstein, Van Gogh and, erm, Jenny McCarthy.  Well, OK, not Jenny McCarthy, but it seems a nice note to end on…

Can you believe she went out with Jim Carrey? I mean, I know he's worth a few bob, but fuck me he's got a face you'd never tire of punching.

At the end of last week I came up with a plan: to eat smaller meals and less carbs.  Our bodies crave carbs, because carbs give us energy.  The Atkins diet works by starving the body of carbs, which in turn forces the body to use up fat reserves and lose weight.  I’m not advocating the Atkins diet because I don’t think long-term it’s a good way to lose weight, but the theory holds true.  Instead of cutting out carbs altogether, just cut back on them.  This is what I’d decided to do.

I would put each burger in a bap, I decided.  A bap, a roll, a cob; whatever you want to call it.  I’d call it a cob but I’m also open minded enough to accept that this may confuse other people who refer to a cob as a specific type of roll.  (For example, I’m not the type of bell-end who joins a facebook group called, “Its called a F***ing Cob! Not a bap, or a role [sic], its a COB!!!!”)  So, two cobs would tick the carbohydrate element of this particular meal.

So, to recap, two burgers totalling circa half a pound in weight, in two lovely soft white baps.  Plenty enough for my tea, especially when washed down with six bottles of Peroni.  But then I committed a cardinal sin.  A schoolboy error.  And the lesson which I already knew but which was reiterated to me on Saturday night is thus:

NEVER GO SHOPPING WHEN YOU’RE HUNGRY

Whilst shopping whilst hungry I decided I would have some chips to accompany my burger.  I couldn’t buy a bag of frozen oven chips, because I knew at some point in the near future I’d have to endure something like the following conversation:

Whatshername: Why is there a half-eaten bag of chips in the freezer?

Me: I bought some chips on Saturday night.

Whatshername: Chips? You’re supposed to be on a diet.  You’re never going to lose weight and on and on and on and on and on and on

And she’d be right.  Burgers in cobs and chips is exactly the type of thing I should avoid.  And whether it’s the freaking weekend (quote: R Kelly) or not, it’s the type of thing I should be trying to cut out.

But anyway, once I’d got the idea of chips in my head, there was no turning back.  I could buy potatoes, I thought.  Some Maris Piper ‘best for roasties’ potatoes, and make my own chips…  but proper chips take ages in the oven, and they make the house and everything in it smell of chips, which whatshername would smell like a bloodhound from three miles away.  There was really only one thing for it.  The chippy.  The trusty Great British institution that is the bloody chip shop.

I love our local chippy.  It’s only a five minute walk away, and more importantly they do great fish and chips.  Very occasionally (although not for a while) we get fish and chips from there, as a Friday tea treat perhaps, and we always argue about the size of the chips we get.  I think a regular bag of chips is about right for two people (one of whom, remember, is a gluttonous bastard).  Whatshername thinks a small bag is fine for the pair of us to share.  Whilst I’m tempted to agree with her, I remember one time we ordered a small bag and it wasn’t enough.  That night still haunts me.  If a trip to the chippy is — as it usually is — a treat, then I want more, not less, than I strictly need.

So, to bring us up to speed; it’s Saturday night, I’ve made two burgers which are ready to grill, and I’m going to the chippy for a bag of chips.  I fancied a regular bag to myself, but then I thought no, I should just have a small bag.  A SMALL BAG IS PLENTY a voice screamed inside my head.  A REGULAR BAG IS TOO MUCH FOR TWO PEOPLE YOU MASSIVE TWAT, it went on.  A louder, more persuasive voice told me to stop being such a girl and just buy a regular bags of chips. 

I made a decision.  I would walk in and ask for “a bag of chips.”  If asked for clarification re the size of the bag, I would say small.  If not asked I would just accept what I was given (usually when they don’t ask, they just give you regular).  This is what I’d do.  I’d let The Chippy Woman decide for me.  (She’s obviously far more qualified in the field of nutrition.)

So, I put the grill on to warm up, donned my lovely warm coat, and marched to the chippy.  After watching some fat bastard (and I realise the irony of me saying that) place a fucking ridiculous order (which, I decided, was all for him), I walked to the counter and asked for a bag of chips.

“Small or regular?” The Chippy Woman asked.

Without a second’s hesitation: “Regular please.”

Actually love I've gone right off my tea now...

 
And I ate the lot, despite feeling ridiculously full and then, a bit later, quite sick.

I really am a knobhead.

But does anyone actually bother?  I get the impression that most people talk about new year’s resolutions, but few ever actually see them through to any kind of outcome.

I’m normally no different, but this year I’d decided I would be.  I’ve got this blog to motivate me.  I can blog about my resolutions — what I’m going to do/not do — and I can publicly shame myself if I fail.  Well one of my new year’s resolutions is fucked already.  And I’m not talking about in a “I decided I was going to give up alcohol but I forgot and had an Irish coffee” type of sense, I’m talking about in a “I decided I was going to start running again to train up for the kilomathon but my knee is still knackered” type of sense.

Yup, I’m going to have to officially pull out of the kilomathon, which is a genuine shame.  I’ve been resting the knee for the six (ish) weeks since I popped it, and I’d decided that in the first week of January I’d try a couple of not-too-strenuous walks to see how it’d hold up. 

January 1^st, whatshername and I went for a short little walk, so short as to not even register on the should-I/shouldn’t-I? register.  Afterwards: felt fine.  Next day: fuck, that doesn’t feel right.  It isn’t really painful, there’s just no strength in it, and I’ve felt a couple of little warning ‘pang’s.  I haven’t even been doing anything arduous when I’ve felt them: bending down to get a beer from the fridge, rolling over in bed, etc.  There’s no way I’ll be able to run 26km in ten weeks time.

So, resolution #1: failed.  I will, however, try to lose some weight (again).  But, without the ability to do even moderate exercise, I’m going to have to eat very healthily (which, I may have mentioned, I fucking hate).  Today I weighed myself and I’m a massive 18st 12lb (pretty much back where I started when I first blogged about losing weight).  So, resolution #1(version 2): To get down to a still-but-slightly-less-massive 17 stone by, let’s say, Friday 9^th April (nearly 14 weeks).

Resolution #2: finish writing my novel before my 30^th birthday.  Today is January 4^th — that gives me 343 days.  I don’t want to be the bloke who tried to write a novel (two novels and a sitcom, but who’s counting?) and didn’t fail: rather worse, he just didn’t finish it.  So, my thirtieth birthday seems like a momentous enough occasion.  For clarity, I don’t plan for it to be published by then, or to have been accepted by an agent, I just want to have finished writing it.  It doesn’t have to be the finished article — (i.e. a completely polished ‘final draft’ — it just has to be a story that ends.

So, have you got any new year’s resolutions?  And remember, keep them SMART.

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• I probably won’t blog in the next couple of weeks.  Don’t despair/celebrate — I’ll be back.  I’ll try to blog so do keep checking for updates.

Tom Selleck: it's not gay to have a man-crush on him, is it? Not that I do, obviously.

• Some of you may have seen slightly homosexual-looking men walking around with dodgy ‘taches the past month or so.  Well, they’ve all been taking part in Movember — “a moustache growing charity event… that raises funds an awareness for men’s health.”  I’m doing my own version now called Decembeard, where I will aim to complete the month of December without shaving (no charities will benefit, however).  I will probably last a week before whatshername’s incessant nagging forces me to reach for the razor.  And slit my wrists. 

'29' by Ryan Adams. Don't buy it, you'll be disappointed. I love it, but you probably won't.

• On the 13^th of December I will try to forget the fact that I will be turning 29.  Please take time to drop by and leave me a message to warm my bitter, ageing heart.  Presents (just cash this year please) to the usual address.  Ta.

Be good.

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