I decided against venturing outside today. While public holidays are all well and good, they do ensure that any worthwhile attraction whether natural or man-made will be packed with people.

Instead I indulged in lethargy, lemonade, Lego, and several other “L” related pursuits.

Apparently we are inspired to greatness and yet to copy is generally considered to be a negative. In fact the term copy has become especially demonised in the few decades with the rise of piracy or intellectual property theft call it what you will. However the type of copying to which I refer isn’t that, it’s observing the actions and intentions of others and replicating them yourself.

When I read a book or watch a television programme I quite often find myself thinking “I’d rather like to do that”. Whether that be taking a scenic train journey or swimming in a remote lake or building a timber creation, or any number of other activities or adventures that have been documented in print, on film or indeed online. But something in me feels the need to admonish myself for that impulse, to punish the innocent enthusiasm and childishly taunt the idea that I might be some simpleton sheep following the footsteps of others and failing to tread my own path.

As has long been established “There is nothing new on earth”, a motto which in itself is proof of the fact given it was first uttered by someone other than me. Now I realise there firsts and a whole industry, or at least beverage sponsored book, dedicated to recording them. At best these are edge cases, if not the lunatic fringe in some instances. So perhaps plotting a trend towards uniqueness is a map to madness of one kind or another.

Maybe the reality is that every experience or achievement is only truly valid in the context of an individual. I can only realise an event by partaking in it, regardless of its superficial lack of uniqueness, my own consciousness will parse it and ensure in the most important way that it is unique to me. So I know I must resolve to reject the self-limiting voice, but that’s still a hard habit to break.

Self-medication, according to Wikipedia:

“is the use of a drug with therapeutic intent but without professional advice or prescription.”

In this instance I am not talking about drugs of either the prescription or indeed illegal variety, I’m not talking about alcohol or nicotine; I’m not even talking about friend of the perpetually wired caffeine. My drug of choice in this particular instance is television.

Now you might not consider television to be a narcotic, and indeed in a literal sense you’d be right however I refer to its undoubted mood altering and indeed mind altering properties. I tend to watch television in one of two ways, either drama in a somewhat superficial manner or gobbling down the informative content of factual programming.

However every once in a while I like to get really properly obsessed with a particular program. Not just randomly, but every few years I feel like my much underused “emotional muscle” needs a workout and tv is the way I choose to do it.

In 1992 Sky was only a few years old, still broadcasting in analogue and requiring a large dish to receive. For all those reasons and more at the time we weren’t a satellite household. So I was stuck with 4 channels and precious little in the way of overnight entertainment. However those dark late hours of the night were thankfully filled with LA Law and therein began my first foray into episodic co-dependency.

The West Wing with its excellent writing and superb characterisation was my next obsession some years later. It was an hour of my life that was absolutely not to be interrupted. I’d slip effortlessly into the world of power and intellect and relationships that the show painted. My mood would fluctuate with the highs and lows of the story.

Grey’s Anatomy was rather appropriately my next broadcast medication, a medical drama much more about relationships than medicine. The lows were good and visceral. I particularly enjoyed, if that’s the right term, the way the characters baggage would so regularly derail their lives. You could argue that I related to that, and maybe I did.

My current, that is to say latest, televisual obsession is an Australian drama; character-driven stories with a very rich visual feel, and an exposed humanity to which I’m quite attracted. Having found some clips on YouTube, I’m now mail-ordering DVD’s from another continent (and another region, thanks to the idiots at the MPAA and their ilk) to scratch this particular itch.

So expensive it might be, oh the joys of import duty and royal mail charges, but it’s completely legal and unlikely to affect my health and that’s why television is my drug of choice.

So another Friday, another works meet-up. Sadly this one was to celebrate, if that’s the right term, another round of layoffs at my erstwhile employer. I exercised either good judgement or good timing and left the company while it was still very much in its expansion phase. Unfortunately for some of my former colleagues the company is very much contracting at present and sadly several of them have been swept over by the incoming tide of redundancies.

It was good to catch up and I’d have spent longer out, but as the restaurant of choice for the evening wasn’t to my taste I ducked out early. I’d seriously considered parking myself in a nearby pub while they ate and meeting up with them later in the evening, but truth be told I was simply not in the right frame of mind for drinking alone in public.

When an email has made it through the initial human and digital filter the first thing I do is look at the raw headers. It’s something I’ve always done, I like to know what I’ve actually received and quite often I find an interesting new header field.

One of the emails that landed in my inbox today was a surprise, both in terms of its body content and its header. The body I’ll come to later, but the reason the header was a surprise was that it contained mostly addresses that I didn’t recognise.

Given that I didn’t want to consider the content right now, I decided the best way to deal with this troubling email was to obsess about the header instead. Firstly it’s a group email and it wasn’t BCC’d so not only could I see all the recipients, they could all see me. Normally at this point the sender would get a sharply worded email from me, detailing my displeasure at their use of my email address in this manner but given the nature of the email perhaps public and communal dissemination was appropriate.

Having exhausted that line of reasoning I examined the header itself; sadly nothing interesting here it was pretty bare bones as you’d expect from Hotmail. Yes, I know somebody with a Hotmail address – so last century; I don’t think he can even claim to have chosen it “ironically”, but I suppose I won’t hold it against him.

What about the other recipients? I was clearly going to be the only one with my own domain; I gave myself an imaginary “air tick” of congratulation. But wait, I wasn’t there were others with their own domains – interesting. That was balanced with a number of hotmail, yahoo, live, gmail, and other generic ISP mail domains. There was even one AOL email address. I was already building up a picture in my mind, a doubtless wholly inaccurate and unfettered with facts one, but a picture nonetheless.

However try as I might I couldn’t spend any longer avoiding the important part of the email, the body itself. Essentially it was an invite to a wedding party. I was surprised to be invited, I know the groom in so far as I’ve worked with him before. Actually that’s not quite right, I’ve been employed by the same company – we never technically worked together as such. I’ve met his fiancé once at the Bloomsbury theatre, ostensibly for all of 10 minutes; i.e. exchanging a few words before and after the show. I was pretty sure I managed to come across as grindingly awkward and hence the perfect stereotype of my chosen profession. So again, why on earth would I deserve an invite? – I was perplexed.

Now I’m quite aware that an invitation to pretty much anything short of your own execution should be considered as either an endorsement of you by the inviter, or an act of obligation. Clearly I’m not related to anyone at this event, nor do they owe me anything which might constitute them using an invite as some sort of payback. Still confused then as to why two seemingly rational individuals would invite me; I mean I wouldn’t invite me.

Perhaps this train of thought was just deflection from the abject terror my subconscious was conjuring up in terms of how many and varied ways I could make an idiot of myself in mixed and as yet unmet company. The last couple of wedding reception/party‘s I’ve attended have left me with the distinct desire to stab myself, metaphorically at least, repeatedly in the head. Not that this reflects in any way on the hosts or guests of said events whom were all delightful, just that my perceived social ineptitude both irritated and depressed me and tends to lead to extensive mental deconstruction after any such event.

The usual parental advice, apart from “don’t talk to strangers” “eat your greens” and “study hard at school” is “that most things aren’t as bad as you imagine they will be”. I know I should probably just suck it up and accept their gracious invitation. I notice there are a couple of my old work colleagues that have also been invited, which oddly makes my decision harder. I reason this way, if I was going to know nobody at the event then I’m pretty sure I’d chicken out of going, express my deepest regrets and concoct some plausible excuse about a scheduling conflict. But as there will be others there I know I really feel I ought to make the effort, I just need to man-up and send the damn reply.

I realise this is all hopelessly self-absorbed drivel, but then it is my blog so quite what else you’d expect I don’t know...

Ever since the spectre of ID cards and the horribly invasive ID database flared up I’ve been mentally preparing myself for a time when my passport expired and not wanting to feed the ID beast I would be left without valid documentation and therefore unable to leave the country; legally at least!

My passport is due to expire fairly soon, I think from memory I’ve got about a years’ worth of validity left. However somewhat fortuitously and much to my delight it seems the new coalition government is set to repeal the ID card bill that was brought in by the previous administration. Currently the bill to do so is going through parliament and should be passed sometime in December. Now I’m not foolish enough to be quaffing celebratory champagne, metaphorically or otherwise, until I see the final form of the bill I won’t be completely satisfied. But without wanting to count my imaginary chicks before they’ve hatched I did find myself wondering today where I might travel to with my possibly new-found freedom.

Having avoided one lot of unwanted government intrusion, much as I enjoy the US as a country I’m becoming increasingly unwilling to put up with their ridiculous security paranoid and the utter rudeness and contempt that many INS staff show visitors (nay paying tourists) to their country. As if this contempt cake wasn’t elaborate enough, the US government in their less than infinite wisdom have added a giant rosy cherry called the “Travel Promotion Act”. This utterly absurd piece of legislation is designed to piggyback the already cumbersome ESTA and add, wholly against the spirit of unfettered capitalism, a $10 charge to enter the country. Now compared to the amount of money I would likely spend in the country and indeed spend getting to the country the fee is statistically irrelevant, but principle shouldn’t have a price tag and my objection is principled.

I visited Switzerland once, and by visited Switzerland I mean skied over the border from France jumped on a chairlift and returned to swiftly back to France. I repeated this particular trick several times during the week, but I never got to see much of the country other than their excellent skier locomotion infrastructure. So maybe the land of Cuckoo clocks and chocolate should be the first country on my list.

Every time I visit the Bloomsbury Theatre I forget where it is. I know roughly where it is; I mean I’m not wandering aimlessly around Paddington or the Embankment. But depending on which direction I approach from I always imagine it’s to the left when it’s actually one road to the right and vice-versa. Today I thought yup, it’s to the left of the Welcome building. Wrong! But I suppose the extra steps are probably going to do me no harm.

I was here to see Richard Herring and the AIOTM crew, which according to my ticket was due to start at 7:30pm. I decided that rather than catch the tail-end of the rush hour, as it was a pleasant enough day I’d turn up early and mooch around. I picked my ticket up from the box office, then armed myself with the urban warriors’ weapon of choice a bottle of water and headed off to find a little green in which to lounge.

Clouds tootled across the sky, a multiplicity of humanity paraded past and I was even visited upon by several of our feathered friends. I had no food on me at all, so I felt a little bad when a blackbird baby hopped along the path looking and flapping expediently in my direction. If that wasn’t bad enough, a baby robin whose breast only had the slightest hint of redness appeared too, to peck at my conscience. He hopped onto the bench where I was sitting and then hopped closer until he was considerably less than an arm’s length away. I pulled my best apologetic face and he flew away, I imagine, in disgust.

Mr Herring, as he is known to those of us that like to keep a respectable distance from celebrities, attracts a certain crowd; he’s commented as much on many occasions and while undoubtedly humorous it’s also very much true. The vast majority of the crowd waiting outside the theatre were “portly geeks”, a group which I’m a proud member of. Admittedly, I’m not so mad keen on the “portly” badge, but I wear my geek credentials with pride.

Anyhow, the first half was Richard Herring alone doing a preview of his “Christ on a Bike” show that he was taking to the Edinburgh Fringe later in the year. Unsurprisingly this delivery was missing a little polish, but I thought the material was amusing and well observed. Certainly from my experience I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend the show; if I were attending the fringe I’d certainly like to see the final cut.

The second half was the headline act, Richards’ self-penned AIOTM (AIOTM!) As It Occurs To Me; a mixture of stories that have “occurred to him” and other more abstract sketch based material. He’s joined by Emma Kennedy, Dan Tetsell and the comedy musical styling’s of Christian Reilly. I don’t really know how to adequately describe this part of the show, other than it’s a series of sketches often with characters or references to earlier “episodes” of AIOTM (AIOTM!). My advice would be to seek it out yourself and give it a listen as it is freely downloadable as a podcast.

All too soon the performance was over and the audience collectively trooped out onto the street. It was at this point that it, rather ironically, occurred to me that I hadn’t picked up a programme. Damn. But I did make a donation to charity anyhow, so I guess maybe I’ve got some karma in hand!