Sunday 27th May - Hot

Within the last week summer seems to have finally arrived, suddenly and quite unannounced.  After a month's solid rain the clouds have parted and left the country bathing in a sub-continent-like heat-wave. Barbecues are organised, the beach gets crowded, and everyone starts to get very sunburnt. Nearly everyone I saw in the supermarket over the weekend were buying bags of ice cubes too, as if they were in imminent danger of melting if they weren't bought that day. Just like when it snows you get the impression that we just aren't prepared for any slight fluctuation in climate, even if it does happen at least once every year. 

The other thing you notice is the amount of body parts suddenly on show - body parts which should never really see the light of day. Pasty white limbs, flabby bellies and unsightly hair are now visually on offer everywhere you look, as if the right to display them were under immediate jeopardy. The new rule at my work allowing shorts to be worn to the office has revealed pairs of legs which may not have seen the light of day for 20 years or more. 

I was even shocked to be standing at the railway crossing on Friday, only to after a minute or so realise that the woman standing next to me, waiting for the gates to open, was wearing just a bikini. And carrying a plastic shopping bag. She obviously thought it was hot enough to just nip out to do her shopping in what was effectively just her underwear - which is what a bikini is by the way, not appropriate clothing alternative for the summer months, just a bra and knickers designed for going in water. For what it was worth she was pretty good looking, but I couldn't help but wonder what I'd look like myself if I'd just popped down the shops in nothing but my pants. Maybe I'm being a bit old-fashioned, just seemed over the top to me. Not sure where I put my wallet if I went shopping in nothing but my pants anyway.

Yesterday I myself contributed to the stereotypes of the heatwave by going to the cricket and getting highly sunburnt. I wouldn't change it though, there's something about the sunshine that doesn't just burn skin, it also warms the soul, makes you happy.

Thursday 3rd May - Bad Breath and Polling Day

Today I've been thinking about bad breath. Specifically about a bad breath emanating from  the bloke that has just sat diagonally opposite me at work. It stinks. It's not a smell I can define as such, and I couldn't offer any other notes than; rotten, lingering, and it put me off my sandwiches, but it certainly tainted what was already a very average day.


I found myself wondering just where it came from (other than his mouth). How does such a small, bearded man - and I'm not suggesting being small and having a beard has any connection to his condition, I'm just setting the scene - but how does such a small, bearded man produce such a large quantity of foul-smelling exhalatory gas for such a long time? Surely he'd run out of his reserves of bad breath eventually? Apparently not. And with every slight sigh, or short spell of speaking, he emitted a potent gust of halitosis across the, perhaps 2 or 3 metres between us, which settled comfortably around me. Like an unwanted extra colleague, impeding my personal space. 


Now I don't know what was causing it (from the smell I could hazard a guess it was from a combination of not cleaning his teeth enough, and eating dog shit sandwiches for breakfast), but the thing that got me was that this guy seems be a massive attraction to some of the women at work. They flock to him. Like flies around a dog shit sandwich. Seemingly, having bad breath is no inhibiter to attracting the opposite sex, which I had never thought possible. It seems I may have wasted valuable time before almost every date I've ever been on, always taking care to spend ages cleaning and flossing my teeth, and even chewing gum, before setting out. This guys probably cleans them once a week and turns up to the meeting place chomping on a raw onion, and she can barely contain herself from mounting him there and then on a bar stool. It just doesn't seem right. I wonder if Sean Connery had bad breath in those Bond films?


Aside from practicing to see how long I could hold my breath for large periods of the day, the other noteworthy event today was voting. It's always a depressing sight every May when the local elections come along and I make my way down to the Polling Station at Lancing Parish Hall to cast my vote for whichever candidate isn't Conservative - which usually leaves me about 1 candidate to choose from. The miserable looks on all of the people who have to work there from 7am to 10pm to satisfy the needs of what can't actually be many people who bother turn out for it. But I quite like voting myself, and am quite proud that in the 8 years I've been eligible to vote I've never not made it down there. I always feel like if I haven't bothered to vote, then I don't really deserve the right to criticise those in Government, local or national, and criticising them is the only way we can really keep them in check. 


Sadly, in the 8 years I've been voting - including 2 general elections, yearly local elections and european - I have never backed a winning candidate, since I live in probably the safest Conservative seat in the country. And I could never bring myself to vote Tory. Not unless they propose handing out free Listerine daily to small, bearded men in their next election manifesto.