Good value

I'm realising more and more that pound shops are simultaneously both hugely under- and over-rated. I've gradually learned that there are some things that are excellent value and should only really be bought from pound shops, but some things that are really not worth the money at all - so I thought a listing of these categories might be a useful thing to have. I'll add to these lists as and when I think of them (though given the update schedule of this blog, don't hold your breath...).

Things that are good value from pound shops

• Flexible filling blades
• Paint rollers and trays
• Vinyl bike covers
• IPhone cables. (Generic micro USB cables are available cheaply elsewhere though, so I wouldn't get those from a pound shop personally).
• Travel power adapters
• Tent peg mallets
• Superglue - but be warned, the packaging is so crap that if you don't use a tube in one go, it'll have all dried before the next time you want to use it. Also be aware that sometimes the packaging will be duff and you'll go to use a brand new tube and find that it's already dried. But when it's ~10 tubes for £1, you can't really complain too badly...
• Car sponges
• Teflon baking tray liners
• GU10 Halogen bulbs (though (a) make sure you get the twin packs and (b) you really ought to be upgrading those to LED bulbs by now).
• Sandpaper

Things that are a false economy and should be avoided

• Tools that need to be manufactured accurately to be useful - allen keys, spanners, screwdrivers etc.. Stuff like hammers are probably okay (though I've not bought a pound shop hammer before).
• Tent pegs
• Sanding blocks

On the* most important people in the world**

If you make friends with good people, good friendships follow almost without any effort.


*Just because you can't really publish any papers starting "On the..." in my field, and it's always been a source of disappointment to me!
**Some people would contest that the most important people in the world are family, not friends. I disagree entirely. Just because someone shares some genetic similarity to me does not mean that they are worthy of respect; I have relatives (not immediate family, but not very distant relations either) who have progressed beyond "zero respect" into active disapproval. It is true that the most important people to me are my immediate family, but that is a distinction that they have had to earn - and admittedly, they have been given the opportunity to earn it over a period of multiple decades, but it is by no means granted automatically. I think it is testament to the quality of my friends that some of them get close to the level of respect that I have for my immediate family, despite the fact that (with one exception) I have known them for less than a single decade.

Where the heart is

You can always go back home.

On getting things done well (enough)

Perfection is the enemy of the good. Mediocrity is the enemy of all that is good.

Desensitisation

Everything loses its emotional impact with repeated exposure. The amazingly beautiful film that draws you to tears becomes boring on the fifth watching. The adrenaline surge of the rollercoaster wanes as you loop around again and again. Pre-match nerves evaporate the more competitions you enter. But there is one thing, after all these years, that still fills me with that mixture of fear and exhilaration - performing a BIOS update. The knowledge that you're just one false keystroke, one trip-over-the-power-cord or one power surge away from turning your sleek, amazingly fast computer into an expensive-and-not-very-practical paperweight is a potent elixir. I'm not sure I like it, but I find it absolutely amazing that it still holds such a power over me. No doubt, if I was tech support for a company and I had to run dozens of them at a time it'd lose its effect, but for now at least, it is the one activity that I can think of which each times can tug at my nerves as intensely as it did the first few times.

I've just had an idea that'll save the world

Well, not really. But it's a pretty darned good one at least. I'm pretty keen on renewable energy on the whole (although I do think that the appropriate near-to-mid-term strategy is nuclear), but there's a big problem with on-shore wind energy; that of siting the wind turbines. I personally think they're actually quite beautiful, elegant things, but I realise that that view isn't shared by everyone. Back in 2008, I went to Berlin for a conference, and on the flight over, I noticed that Germany has a heck of a lot of wind farms. The UK equivalent is golf courses. So... are you thinking what I'm thinking, Pinky? Mini windmills have been placed on crazy golf courses for a century and work brilliantly, increasing the fun of the game... so why not scale the whole thing up, produce some clean energy and make golf less dull all in one fell swoop?

I'll be waiting for notice of my knighthood to appear in my pidge...

Temporal effects on social acceptability

This is really an extension to a previous post from back near the start of this blog. I was hungry this morning and ended up going in to McCrap for breakfast (classy, I know). But while I was sat there eating my grease-in-a-muffin, I noticed a businessman in a suit, clearly on his way to a well-paying job, getting up and leaving. And that felt absolutely normal. But were that exact same man leaving that exact same (and I use the word cautiously) restaurant at 4pm, it would have seemed rather strange. At 11pm? Unthinkable. But at 9am on a weekday, McCrap is an huge mélange of different people. From the well-heeled businessmen, through the parents entertaining their young children all the way to the chavs and the homeless.

It seems odd to me that something that is perfectly acceptable can seem completely unthinkable just a few hours later. I can't think of any other examples off-hand, but I'm sure there must be loads...

English peculiarity

If you stand on a tube platform in London (or pretty much any train platform in the UK) and watch the people around you as a train comes in, you'll notice that people tend to start walking along the platform in the direction that the train is going in, almost as if they think that the train is going to overshoot the platform and they'll need to catch up to it. I'd always assumed that this is an odd psychological effect - that something in your subconscious tells you that this will improve efficiency (by moving in the direction you want eventually to be going) even though rationally you know that what matters is where you are currently standing with respect to the nearest door on the train and sometimes walking in the opposite direction would be better. But then I noticed that people don't do this in Paris - they'll just wait for the train to stop and work out which way they should go. And thinking about it, I don't remember anyone doing it in Germany or Switzerland either - or any other country that I've ever taken the train in. So what quirk of the English temperament makes us behave so strangely? I've absolutely no idea. But it's interesting at least!

The power of music revisited

I'm happy with most of the posts I make to my blogs (both this and my baking blog), but every now and then, there's a post that I'm just not happy with - a subject that I couldn't do justice to. The one in particular that I'm thinking of was on the power of music. But I found a video that conveys every bit of meaning that I wanted to but couldn't. It's worth a watch.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2F_PxO1QJ1c

True meanings

I feel that the word enchantment is bandied around a bit too much and used a bit too cheaply these days, and that the true meaning of the word has been lost in the fog of overuse. But the other evening, I (re)discovered what I think should be used as the definition of the word: a full moon, on a beautifully clear, crisp evening over the skies of Oxford. Utterly enchanting.

Bad days

There are some days when even fantastic news that you've hoped for for years is not enough truly to lift your spirits.

Gourmet selection of pain

We all know that there are different types of pain. There are dull aches, stabbing pains, prickly pains, burning pains and all the myriad of combinations in between. Recently, I started going to a masseuse in an attempt to work out some of the worst knots in my muscles. It's only since then that I've discovered quite how many different flavours pain comes in (and by that, I just mean physical pain; emotion/psychological pain is a whole other kettle of fish). There are ticklish pains that make you want to laugh in a you-either-laugh-or-you-cry sort of way. There are uncomfortable pains that you're not sure whether it's just discomfort or actually pain. There are tearing pains that feel like you're muscles are being ripped apart. And then there's the most delightfully excruciating sort of pain, that I can only describe as an exquisite pain. I hasten to add that it's in no way pleasant - actually, quite the opposite; it's the sort of pain that I dread the most. But it's so... pure and, well, almost delicate, that you can't help but admire it. It's a bit like a safecracker breaking into a bank vault - you don't approve and you don't like it at all, but you can't help appreciate the craft. If you've not experienced it, then you probably have no idea what I mean by an exquisite pain, but I've mulled this over for a while now, and I can think of no other description of it. But if you're curious, go find your nearest sports masseur/masseuse and experience it for yourself. I'm not going to say that you won't regret it (because several times now, halfway through the massage I've started having second thoughts...), but it's certainly an experience!

Hunger

We tend to think of hunger as a bad thing. It usually is, I suppose; especially if you consider how much malnutrition and starvation is happening in the world. But it struck me today that hunger isn't always a bad thing. I was on my way back home after a run that followed a cycle, and I was hungry. I mean really hungry. But there was something sort of... pleasurable about it, and not in a masochistic way. It was a niggling hunger that I knew wouldn't go away unless I ate something - not even a distraction would shake it. Just enough discomfort to make me know that I'd had a decent workout, but not enough to be painful (I daresay almost anyone who has hit the wall before will probably agree that hunger can be painful). And then I started fantasising about the food and drink I would have when I eventually made it back. I think this is the best bit of being that hungry - the anticipation of the first bite of food or the first gulp of drink. Sometimes I get pretty weird cravings for things when I have an exercise-induced pang of hunger; this time around it was pretty normal - I wanted some cola-flavoured sweets.

So yeah... that's about it really. Hunger can be pleasurable sometimes...

Beeps of pointlessness

Why do mobile phones have a setting that makes them beep every time you press a key? These key tones are incredibly annoying for everyone around, but seemingly serve no purpose whatsoever. I'm inclined to suggest that if you need the phone to beep every time you press a key when you, in fact, are the one pressing that key and (presumably) watching the screen to see the result of said key press, then you're probably not quite up to working a mobile phone yet.

In vino veritas

The loosening of the tongue that comes with inebriation applies also to the internal voice; Occasionally, alcohol will break through the veneer of the lies that you tell yourself without realising it.

On the benefits of curvature

Curly fries are better than normal fries. This is a universal truth and I think the few people who disagree with this statement are just plain wrong. But I'm fairly sure that it's not the curvature that makes curly fries so tasty, but rather the seasoning. So why don't they put that same seasoning on straight fries?

It's the little things

I just had a realisation (in the shower, naturally). It's a realisation that sounds very similar to thoughts I've had previously, and it will suprise none of you (or at least not those of you who know me), but I think it's actually quite significant. It was one of those realisations that completely stops you in your tracks when it strikes you and makes you wonder how you never thought of it before. This time around, it is this: A decent shower and a cup of tea makes the world a better place in almost any situation.

I realise that that sounds a little trite, but I genuinely mean it literally. Think of any situation - pick the absolute worst thing that you can imagine happening; Your best friend is involved in a car crash and there's nothing you can do to help, your home country is invaded by a foreign power and is now at war, there's a plague science has never come across and is powerless to deal with sweeping the globe, you wake up with a horrifying realisation that you're going blind and deaf - literally anything. Now picture the exact same situation, but now you have a shower and a cup of tea and imagine how you feel - still pretty darned awful, but slightly calmer, slightly more in control. Perhaps not perceptibly better (and if you're in such a situation, I doubt you'd consciously notice the improvement), but definitely incrementally better.

Now take the other extreme - think of the best thing you can imagine. You fall utterly, hopelessly, uncontrollably in love and the object of your desires reciprocates, you land that dream job that you never believed might even be a possibility, you win big on the lottery just at the moment when you thought you were going to have to declare bankruptcy - again, absolutely anything. Picture it with a shower and a cup of tea afterwards - you're ecstatic still, but now you're even more energised.

It works for everything in between too. You're feeling too hot? Shower and a cup of tea. Had a long, tiring day? Shower and a cup of tea. Someone was horrid to you at work? Shower and a cup of tea. An old friend calls you up out of the blue and you have a lovely conversation over the phone? Shower and a cup of tea. In fact, the only things I can think of that aren't improved by a shower and a cup of tea are water and energy shortages. But with anything else, a shower and a cup of tea might not be the solution (it rarely is), but it'll certainly improve matters. It's the little things.

I've just got out of the shower - I think I'll go and make a cup of tea...

The juvenile sweet tooth

When you're young, you'll eat anything that has enough sugar in it and you'll like it too. Don't believe me? Right, remember how much you liked eating glacé cherries when you were a kid? You used to love baking with them, just because it meant you were allowed to eat some of the leftover cherries (or sometimes, the cherries that were supposed to end up in whatever you were baking), right? Well, try them now. They are nauseating...

Old friends revisited

There are few things in life better than visiting old friends for dinner. One of those few things is having old friends over for dinner.

Life in the fa(s)t lane

I think it's funny how some of the greatest pleasures come from such silly little things. I've commented here before about the immense satisfaction available from puncturing the seals on Nutella jars. Today, I found myself absurdly happy after reading a new post on a friend's blog that essentially just said that things were going really well for her. But on the way home, it suddenly struck me that there's something that happens to me virtually every day that brings me immense pleasure and is ridiculously simple: zipping past traffic on my bike. When the sun's shining and all you see are people (well, mostly blurs of people) sat in the sweltering heat of their cars, going nowhere, with nothing but the brake lights of the car in front for scenery and you are proceeding merrily along the same road, you can't help but smile. But then it gets even better, when you realise every minute they sit in traffic, it's costing them money for petrol, whereas you're not only going fast for free, but getting healthier and fitter with every metre.

It's a bit more difficult to be quite so happy about it when there's lashing rain and it's cold and wet, but actually, I think I'm generally still happier that I'm out on my bike than in a car. At least I know I'm not going to get fat while I'm still cycling!