Milan: Why I Will Not Be Returning

You know you've had a bad holiday when someone asks you how it was and all you can reply is, 'I don't want to talk about it'.

I'd been feeling a bit stressed recently so thought it would be a nice idea to book a cheap, relaxing long weekend in Milan with Tamara.

The flight itself was fine. Not even a minute's delay, no turbulence and I even slept the whole way. To be honest, the flight went far too well for my liking. I should have realised then that it could have only gone downhill from there.

Landed at Milan airport and had to sit on a bus for an hour to reach the city centre. Thought we'd probably be able to walk to the hotel from the central bus terminal, so asked a taxi driver for directions the The Hub Hotel.

'It's a long way', the driver replied.

'How long?' I asked.

'About 50 minutes out of town'.

Great! Fuming, we both got in the back of the taxi. Now, what annoys me most isn't the fact that we spent nearly an hour driving to the hotel. It's the audacity of the hotel to call itself The Hub. It's an insult to the Oxford English Dictionary, which defines a 'hub' as 'a centre or focal point of activity'. This hotel isn't the centre of anything apart from a remote, industrial ghetto.

Even the driver couldn't believe where he was taking us.

'You know, this is really not a good area', he said in a serious tone. 'Don't walk around here at night. Very dangerous. Very bad.'

It wasn't the most reassuring piece of advice I've received. As we drove deeper and deeper into the industrial estate, the driver kept turning right round and staring quizzically into my eyes as if to ask, 'Are you sure you don't want me to turn around?'

The entire area didn't even deserve the title of being called a dump and, if I didn't know any better, I'd say it may well be the birthplace of graffiti. Come to think of it, it sounds Italian, so I wouldn't be surprised.

Finally got to the hotel and realised that every time we wanted to go to the city centre the return journey would cost us an absolute fortune and about two hours of our precious lives.

I'd like to say that the hotel was worth the journey. It really wasn't. If I had to contribute a line for Lonely Planet or Trip Advisor, it would be something like, 'So remote, sterile and soulless is this hotel, you'll wonder what you did wrong in a previous life.'

By some sort of miracle, the receptionist couldn't find our booking on the system. In fact, it turns out the money never even left my account. We were free. Free from the shackles of the industrial outskirts of Milan.

Despite the fact that the receptionist managed to find an available room (and even a free upgrade to a superior room), Tamara and I had already decided that we would find another hotel. Have you ever sat in a hotel lobby for two hours trying to book another hotel, whilst the receptionist stares at you with a look of pure evil? I can assure you, it's quite awkward.

It's not easy finding a hotel room last minute...in the centre of Milan...for a reasonable price...during Milan Fashion Week. I could tell at this point that Tamara was beginning to get a bit upset and was blaming herself for the situation. I'm not saying she's to blame. All I'm saying is, I had nothing to do with choosing this hotel. Anyway, I reassured her that despite the fact that the supposedly cheap holiday was already costing me an arm and a leg, the crisis was now over and we could now relax and enjoy ourselves.

Now, if that were true, this post would finish right about now.

The new hotel was stunningly average at best. What it did have in its favour, however, was that it was right in the centre of the city. In fact, it was a two minute walk from the Duomo - a huge cathedral - and quite possibly the only thing worth seeing in Milan. There really is nothing else to do in Milan. Yes, there are loads of luxury shops, but when you have no interest in shopping whatsoever, and your girlfriend has the income of a tramp, there really is no point going inside.

Walked around the city centre for a few minutes before deciding to go back to the hotel room. We were tired, irritable and just needed to lie down. Fell asleep for about two hours. It was honestly the highlight of the holiday. For those two hours, I was unconscious and didn't have to deal with the situation. I was actually annoyed that I couldn't stay asleep for the rest of the holiday.

Made a reservation for a restaurant called Paper Moon. Marc had recommended it to us, claiming that they had the best veal Milanese he's ever had. At this point, it was the only thing I had to look forward to. Walked around in the pissing rain for half an hour and got completely lost, despite having a map in my hand. Eventually found the restaurant. Unfortunately, they couldn't find our booking on the system and refused to give us a table despite the restaurant being half empty.

Having been virtually kicked out of the restaurant, we walked around for nearly an hour in the torrential rain looking for another restaurant. We passed hundreds and hundreds of clothes shops, including four Dolce & Gabbana stores, but not one restaurant. In this end, we cut our losses, got in a taxi and went straight back to the hotel.

Asked our receptionist to tell us where I could find somewhere that did a nice veal Milanese. She recommended a restaurant nearby, where I got completely ripped off for what was essentially a schnitzel and a bottle of water.

By the time we got back to the hotel, I'd almost lost the will to live. Spent an hour in the hotel lobby looking to see how much it would cost to get the next flight home. Unfortunately, it was far too expensive.

Went back to the room. Sat up in bed pondering the irony of the situation. I'd tried to book a cheap, relaxing holiday in Milan, yet I'd spent a fortune and was more stressed than ever. I errupted into laughter that was so deranged and so psychotic, that it scared Tamara, who then cried herself to sleep...

...that was Day 1.

Woke up and spent the entire morning (and most of the afternoon) in the hotel room playing Monopoly on the iPad, fully aware at all times that we could have been doing this for free in the comfort of my own bedroom. Despite the fact that it was still pouring with rain, we thought it would be a good idea to go out and have a late lunch.

Found what looked to be quite a nice restaurant overlooking the Duomo. The waiter gave us a basket of bread before taking our order. I asked for a club sandwich, and also if we could have some oil and balsamic vinegar for the bread. Well, he did bring the oil and vinegar, but didn't think it was necessary to also bring over a plate to pour it into. What did this man expect me to do? Wrap my lips around the nozzle and drink it directly from the bottle?

A few moments later, the club sandwich arrived.

'Er, what's this?' I asked the waiter, pointing between the slices of bread.

'This is salad', he replied.

'No, this! I said, pointing to the short, curly pube that was balancing delicately on the edge of a leaf of lettuce. Without even an apology, the waiter took the club sandwich and headed back to the kitchen.

About ten minutes later, he returned with a replacement club sandwich. I've never seen such a miserable, pathetic looking sandwich in my life. I mean, look at it!

There's so little chicken inside, it's practically suitable for vegetarians. Now, I'm not a particularly fussy eater and, as I write this, I can only think of two occasions where I have point blank refused to eat what's on my plate. One of them when I was served a donkey's penis and hairy balls in Vietnam. The other was today. Ironically, both meals contained pubes.

I couldn't just send the meal back without an explanation. More importantly, I couldn't let this chef continue to make these sandwiches. I owed it to future customers to put an end to this. I couldn't let the people of Milan or future tourists suffer as I had suffered. I marched into the kitchen and asked to speak to the chef. He didn't speak a word of English but, fortunately, his colleague was on hand to translate every word of my complaint. Did you know that 'pubic hair' in Italian is 'peli pubici'?

Waking up on the third and final day, knowing that I was going home was magical. Even Nelson Mandela didn't feel this happy when he left prison. I've genuinely never been so excited for a holiday to end.

So all in all, it was a great trip and I can't wait to go back.

The Day I Made Macaroons

The effect that the Diamond Jubilee had on our country was, quite frankly, amazing. One minute we’re busy going about our normal lives, moaning about everything from the weather to the recession. The next minute, Union Jacks flags are hanging out of windows, Gary Barlow is some sort of saint, and everyone’s talking about putting up the bunting. Apart from the fact that I still have absolutely no idea what bunting is, I have to say, it was a very good weekend.

I didn’t have any plans to do anything specifically for the Jubilee. However, Carla phoned me up and asked if I wanted to help her bake some red, white and blue macaroons for her mum’s Jubilee tea party. I’m quite possibly the worst cook in the world and so I was initially a bit hesitant, but eventually I decided that I would do it for my country.

Carla’s macaroons were, of course, perfect. Sweet, light and fluffy. They were everything a good macaroon should be. Mine were weirdly shaped, bright pink (there was no red or blue food colouring) and so hard, that I could barely bite into them without the risk of shattering my teeth.

‘What am I supposed to do with these?’ I asked Carla. There was no way she could serve these to the tea party guests. They were completely inedible. It would be like serving pebbles.

‘We could give them to the homeless’, she suggested.

‘What have the homeless done to upset you?’ I asked. ‘I guess you could use them to make a little rock display in the garden?’

I tried giving one of them to her little dog. He seemed to quite like it at first. However, two minutes later he started violently choking, coughing and farting (probably trying to do whatever he could to get rid of the macaroon).

‘Shall we make cupcakes instead?’ Carla suggested, throwing the rest of my macaroons in the bin. I knew that cupcakes would be much easier. All I had to do was follow the recipe exactly. No extra ingredients. No deviations.

When the cupcakes came out the oven, they actually looked quite nice. I even made a bit of chocolate ganache to go on the top. I couldn’t wait to see how they tasted. Took a big bite out of one of the cupcakes…it was basically a chocolate omelette!

Tamara and Jake both finished university this week. I’m ridiculously proud of both of them and also can’t believe that, after four years, the long distance aspect of my relationship with Tamara is finally over.

Went up to Nottingham Uni to visit Tamara after her last exam. I realised that this weekend was probably the last one I’ll ever spend in Nottingham (hopefully). It’s been a big part of my life for the past six years. One thing I won’t miss, however, is having a shower in Tamara’s house.

You’d be forgiven for thinking that a house of 8 girls would be clean and tidy. However, their bathroom is a disgrace! I refuse to take off my socks until I’m virtually in the shower in case I catch something from the floor that’s never been cleaned. There’s a dead wasp just under the radiator that’s been gradually decomposing since they moved in. Also, each girl has a bottle of shampoo, a bottle of conditioner and a bottle of body wash in the shower, so if I accidentally kick one bottle, all 24 fall over like dominoes. The most frightening thing, however, is the upturned plug in the corner of the shower. I don’t know who or what is wrapped around that plug, but on close inspection, it looks like it could be part of someone’s wig. 

Got home on Sunday and received an email confirmation from Procter & Gamble about the P&G Capital Clean Up this weekend. A bit of background: unless you’ve been on holiday on Mars for the past 7 years, you may be aware that the Olympics are coming up soon. Procter & Gamble (Proud Sponsor of Mums etc.) have set up an initiative to clean up parts of London before the tourists arrive for the Games.

I thought it would be a nice idea to get involved in the Olympics somehow, so decided to volunteer. My mum thinks it’s weird. She thinks it’s strange that I’ve never tidied my bedroom in my life yet I’m volunteering to clean up a city.

The problem is, I’ve been told that I’ll be placed in Barnet! I’ve just been on Google Maps and can confirm that Barnet is about 20 miles away from the Olympic site. It’s got nothing to do with the Olympics whatsoever! The only tourists who might set foot in Barnet are the ones who happen to have fallen asleep on the Northern line on their way home from the Games.

So this weekend, I’ll be in Coppetts Wood Nature Park ‘restoring natural habitats, clearing and improving pathways and removing unsightly litter that threatens local wildlife.’ I’m sure it will be fun. At the very least, I’m sure I’ll have something to blog about.

The Day I Saw The X Factor Auditions

Had a team conference at the O2 this week. As I walked towards the Dome entrance, I couldn’t help but notice a queue of tens of thousands of people. I say ‘people’, what I really mean is ‘freaks’. Multicoloured mohawks, semi-naked girls, people holding banners saying things like ‘Gary Barlow, will you marry me?’ Turns out we had booked our team meeting on the same day as the first round of the X Factor auditions.

The good news was that our meeting room was fairly well soundproofed, so the loud music, the terrible singing and the screaming audience weren’t too much of a problem. The bad news was that we had to share our toilet with the auditionees.

Walking into the toilets was like walking into a scene from One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. One guy was pacing around the toilets talking to himself (probably reciting his sob story); another was studying himself in the mirror, holding an imaginary microphone and singing the same line over and over again; one guy was being sick in the urinal; and one guy was even washing his mouth out with hand soap! Completely normal!

I do love the X Factor – mainly because of how seriously it’s taken in this country. You have 12-year-old girls saying things like, ‘I’ve been dreaming about this moment my whole life’. And the sob stories get more and more extravagant each year. Back in the Steve Brookstein days, it was things like, ‘I was bullied in school’. Nowadays, it’s things like, ‘my great great grandma’s dying wish was for me to audition for the X Factor’. To be honest, love, I think it’s more likely that your great grandma’s dying wish was for a large dose of morphine.

My favourite though, is when a contestant is voted off of the live show. ‘I promise you haven’t seen the last of me!’ he or she will cry out in a final desperate bid to hold onto the last iota of their quickly diminishing fame. Of course they’re never seen again, except for perhaps a brief appearance on Big Brother or the Eurovision Song Contest – or both, in Jedward’s case.

Oh yeah, the meeting! It was all going very well until we had to break off into smaller groups for a bit of brainstorming. Our group went into the cafeteria area, which at first was nice and quiet. However, a few of the auditionees had also discovered that the cafeteria was nice and quiet. So our brainstorm session was constantly interrupted by a girl singing ‘Tonight, I’ll be a naughty girl’.

At the end of the meeting we managed to sneak into the arena and watch a bit of the X Factor auditions being filmed. Well, to be more accurate, all we had time to see was the warm-up act – the world’s most unfunny comedian failing to make even one of the ten thousand people in the audience laugh.

Got home and felt really rough. I’m not sure if it was because of the muggy weather or just overexposure to X Factor contestants. For some unknown reason, I had a craving to use a face pack. Had a little rummage around my mum’s toiletries but couldn’t find anything. Of course, I managed to find something in Jake’s toiletries though – a large pack of Dead Sea mud.

‘This looks quite good’, I thought. I had a quick browse of the instructions on the back. It said that I had to use the whole pack at once or it would dry out. The thing is, I only wanted to put a little bit on my face. It seemed such a waste to throw away all of that Dead Sea mud, so I slathered it over my entire body.

I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror. I looked ridiculous. What really bothered me, however, was that I was beginning to smell like rotten egg. I quickly grabbed the empty mudpack from the bin. I started wondering if it could have been out of date, but then realised that the mud is probably thousands of years old anyway.

I looked to see if there were any warnings or side effects written on the pack. ‘May cause minor skin irritation’, ‘Keep product away from eyes’ – the usual stuff. Nothing about smelling of poo then. I didn’t want to leave the mud on for a second longer. I jumped in the shower and washed it all off.

Got out the shower and into bed. I felt much better. Clean, soft skin, and only the faintest aroma of rotten egg emanating from my pores.

Happy Jubilee Weekend!

The Day It Was Hotter Than Hawaii

Apparently, the British only ever talk about two things. One of them is football but, since the season is now over, everyone seems to have defaulted to the other major topic of English conversation: the weather.

But who can blame us? I mean, over the last couple of months, it’s been mental! Only a few weeks ago, the government announced that we’re experiencing a terrible drought and enforced a nationwide hosepipe ban. Of course, this was immediately followed by non-stop rain, which was so heavy at times that I had begun to wonder if London Zoo had started grouping their animals into twos.

But a couple of days ago, something magical happened. The sun came out! In fact, this week the newspapers have been going on about how it’s hotter in England than in parts of Africa. What they fail to mention, however, is that it’s currently winter in most of Africa.

I read today that it’s hotter than Hawaii. I don’t think that the Hawaiians are going to be too jealous though. I mean, hot weather in Hawaii conjures up images of hula skirts, sunbathing and cocktails on the beach. Hot weather in England usually means overweight people walking around not wearing enough clothes, sweaty businessmen, and a perpetual whiff of BO on the Underground.

This morning the train was an absolute joke. If it’s Hawaii temperature outside, then it’s more like Death Valley in the carriage. As I boarded, I noticed that there was only one seat left. The problem was, it was next to Kettle, who I have found myself sitting next to for the past three days. Every time this guy breathes, his nose lets out a ridiculously loud, high-pitched whistle like an old-fashioned kettle or broken squeaky toy. It’s actually unbearable. So I’ve sat next to Kettle for three days in a row. Each journey is about 20 minutes. Assuming, he emits the sound of a kazoo every 5 seconds, that’s 720 whistles I’ve had to endure (don’t worry, I’ve double checked my sums). I refused to sit next to him again so chose to stand.

By the time the train reached Harrow, the carriage was completely rammed. I found myself pressed up against a little old man - his head nestled between my breasts…my knee sandwiched between his legs. Honestly, I’ve seen Siamese twins further apart than this.

A few minutes later, the train made an emergency stop for some unknown reason – probably a signal failure. A few passengers lost their balance, including my Siamese little old man. As he fell towards me, I couldn’t help but accidentally knee him violently in the penis. Well, I say I kneed him in the penis. A more accurate description would be that he penised me in the knee. I could tell he was in pain, but he put on a brave face. To be honest, I think it taught him a lesson: don’t stand so close to me. I wonder if Sting had experienced something similar when he wrote the song.

Went for a shisha after work with Adam and Marc. We happened to have a pack of cards on us and, after a couple of hours, decided to invent a new card game. I call it ‘Guess the Card’. Simple rules – one person takes a random card from the deck and places it face down on the table. The other person has to guess the card. If he gets it right (1 in 52 – don’t worry I’ve double checked my sums), he gets a prize or maybe someone else has to do a forfeit. Trust me, it’s a great game.

I started off. ‘Marc, if you guess this card right, I’ll get on the Underground right now and go all the way to the end of the Jubilee line and back' (it would’ve taken me about 2 hours). He said the Queen of Spades. It was the Queen of Clubs. Close, but luckily he was wrong.

It was Marc’s turn. ‘Arnold, if you get this right…’ He had a think. ‘You can have my flat to yourself for a whole week’.

I paused for a moment, took a deep breath and uttered, ‘Five of Clubs’.

His face dropped. He turned the card over…Five of Clubs!

So I’ll be moving into Marc’s lovely flat at some point in the next couple of months. I wonder what his fiancée, Avital, will think when he breaks the news to her.

Happy Friday!

The Day I Returned

They say bad luck always comes in groups of three; and in the last couple of days, three things of mine have completely broken.

The first thing to spontaneously break was my car. The small dent on the bumper that I accidently caused on Day 2 is now completely insignificant compared to the state that the car is currently in. I was happy driving home from the cinema a couple of nights ago when my car decided to have an impromptu personality crisis. Instead of acting like a regular Mini, it decided that it would rather be a Lamborghini. The gentlest of touches on the accelerator and the engine would rev uncontrollably, throwing me back violently against the seat and sending the car zooming down the road.

That was actually quite cool, apart from the fact that at 30mph the engine sounded like it was going to explode and the fact that the car was emitting a horrendous smell not too dissimilar to one of those farts that you do when you’re ill.

I realised I couldn’t go on like this. I phoned my car insurance company and asked if they could send someone to tow my car home. An hour later a guy turned up, completely bald with a round glossy head and virtually no chin. I’d asked the insurance company to send someone to tow my car…what they had sent was essentially a hard boiled egg on legs.

To cut a long story short, I need a new gearbox. The problem is, a new gearbox is almost as much as the car is worth.

The second thing that’s not working is my debit card…and for once it’s not because I have no money on it. I was in the supermarket buying a few bits and pieces, went to pay, and nothing. Card not recognised. I’d already packed all of the stuff into plastic bags. Luckily, I was with Kosky at the time so forced him to pay for everything. I can’t even begin to think how degrading it would have been to unpack the bags and return the food because I couldn’t pay for it. Anyway, it turns out the magnetic strip of the card has failed and I have to wait 3-5 working days to get a new one.

The third thing that broke was my laptop charger. One minute it was absolutely fine, happily charging away like a well-behaved charger should. Then last night, it decided to split in half for no apparent reason.

I had no choice but to go to Apple and buy a replacement. How much do you think a laptop charger should cost? A tenner? £15 max? Try £50. I couldn’t believe it! £50 to buy a wire! It wasn’t even like it was £49.99 and I could’ve tricked my brain into thinking it was cheaper than it was.

To make matters worse, the queue was a complete joke. I had to wait for about 20 minutes behind a line of iGimps salivating at the fact that they were about to buy something from Apple. Eventually I got to the front. ‘You do realise that £50 for a charger is essentially daylight robbery?’ I said to the gormless pleb standing behind the till. ‘I know’, he replied, a few seconds later.

As I walked out of Apple my phone started ringing. It was Jake. ‘What’s news?’ he asked. ‘Everything in my life is breaking’, I said. ‘My car, my debit card, my charger’.

‘It’s your fault’, he replied. ‘You’ve got negative energy and you’re inviting the bad luck into your life’. Now let me explain. A few months ago, Jake bought a book called The Secret, a self-help book that encourages positive thinking and gradually helps you to transcend from a normal human being into a spiritual, overly optimistic wanker.

‘What do you mean?’ I asked.

‘Well, your car broke. Then you got so annoyed about the car breaking that your negative aura is causing other things in your life to break.’ By the way, this is a genuine conversation that I had with my brother, who is three weeks away from graduating.

‘You need to focus on positive thoughts and positive things will happen’, he continued. ‘Tell me something good that’s happened today’.

‘Well, not much really’, I answered. ‘Although, I did go for a poo earlier and got splashback right up my bum hole. It was a bit of a shock, but actually quite refreshing.’

‘This is what I mean’, he said. ‘You’ve got a bad attitude and it’s making negative things happen to you.’

‘You’re talking rubbish’, I said angrily. ‘You’re telling me that my car broke down and I got so angry that the negative energy corrupted the magnetic strip on my debit card which, in turn, split my laptop charger’. I was getting more and more heated. ‘Jake, you’re talking absolute…’ and then my phone died. Another bloody thing that’s broken!

They say bad luck always comes in groups of three; and if a fourth bad thing happens…well, it’s no exception to the rule. It’s probably just the first of the next group of three.

Maybe I’ll give this Secret book a read.

Happy Friday. More next week.

Day 16: The Day My iPhone Broke

My iPhone is broken. It was perfectly fine one moment, then stone cold dead the next. I've tried everything to turn it back on. I've tried charging it, hard resetting it, even praying to it. Nothing! I've gone from holding the world's best phone to holding the world's most expensive brick in a matter of seconds.

It's ridiculously inconvenient when your phone doesn't work. What's really annoying, however, is that it has the only alarm clock that I trust to wake me up in the morning. The last time I tried to use something other than my mobile to wake me up, it was an absolute disaster.

It was the night before I had a big meeting that was due to last the whole day. I'd only been working for about four months, so I was extra keen to make a good impression. The meeting was due to start at 8.30am in Waterloo. To make it on time, I needed to set my alarm for about 6am. The problem was, my iPhone was broken at the time (it's amazing, they can put a man on the moon, but they can't make an iPhone that works).

I thought my best option was to set an alarm on my laptop. Unfortunately, it never went off. I didn't just oversleep...I didn't wake up until 10.30am. The meeting had already been running for two hours and I was still in bed. I don't think I've ever got dressed so quickly in my life. Imagine the faces of my colleagues and my director when I burst into the meeting just as they were about to break for lunch!

I wasn't taking any chances this time. I managed to hunt down as many alarm clocks as I could find in the house and spent the last five minutes before bed setting alarms on six different devices.

At 7.30am this morning I was woken up violently by a discordant orchestra of buzzes, chimes and beeps. After a few seconds, I'd managed to switch off five out of six alarms. One of them was missing...Clocky.

You see, Clocky is no ordinary alarm clock. Clocky has wheels. When 7.30am strikes, Clocky's wheels start spinning furiously. He jumps off the bedside table and rides around the bedroom looking for an obscure place to hide. This means you have to get out of bed in order to turn him off. Some call him a snoozer's worst nightmare. I call him a little sh*t.

I spent the next couple of minutes trying to work out where the beeping was coming from, until I realised that he'd managed to roll under my bed and wedge himself behind a cardboard box. At 7.35 this morning, I found myself on my hands and knees, crawling under my bed looking for an alarm clock. I emerged covered in dirt, irritable, and with a dusty cobweb clinging to my eyelids. Not a great start to the week!

The day was reasonably busy, but relatively uneventful. Within seconds of getting home, however, I managed to break something else...my shisha. For those of you who don't know, a shisha is a fruity tobacco pipe (don't worry, it's perfectly legal).

Somehow, I had knocked it off the kitchen unit, causing it to shatter on the floor. I'm gutted! The shisha and I have been through so much together. It even made a cameo appearance in one of the most memorable moments to have ever taken place in my household.

Picture the scene....a warm summer's afternoon in 2008. Family and friends are gathered in the garden to celebrate my 21st birthday. My parents are sitting at a table on the patio whilst Tamara, my friends and I are chatting on the grass, which I should add is a lot higher than the patio level. My brother is also on the grass, smoking the shisha with his friends. A peaceful, civilised scene.

After a couple of hours my grandma arrived. As I mentioned, this happened a few years ago, a time before my grandma had started making clay sculptures of my girlfriend's head. In fact, it was the first time Tamara had ever met my grandma. She walked across the patio and spotted my brother smoking the shisha. She climbed up onto the grass and walked over to him. I wasn't quite sure what was going to happen. I thought there was a strong chance she was going to tell him off for smoking.

And then those immortal words were uttered from my grandma's mouth, 'I love a bit of that. Let's have a puff'. I don't know what she even thought it was, but she grabbed the pipe and drew in a long deep breath. The rest of us looked on in disbelief.

For a couple of seconds, nothing really happened. My grandma then proceeded to stagger around the garden like a deer that had just been shot with a rifle. 'Ooo I feel a little bit queer', she yelped, as she accelerated towards the edge of the grass before stage-diving head first down a few rocks and onto the patio below.

The chairs parted like the Red Sea as my grandma face-planted the ground. I took Tamara by the hand, walked over to my grandma, who was lying dazed in a mangled heap on the floor and said, 'Tamara this is my grandma. Grandma, this is Tamara.'

*          *          *

I decided today that I'm going to take a break from blogging for a while. I'd just like to take this opportunity to thank everybody who's read and enjoyed the blog over the past couple of weeks. Thank you, in particular, to everyone who has commented, 'liked' and shared the blog with their friends. The praise you have all given me has been unbelievable and I appreciate it very much.

I actually can't believe how many times people have visited my blog since New Year's Day. As I write this, the site has received 170 hits today alone. And since I started the blog, I've had a total of over 1,800 hits. Considering that about 90% of these have come directly from the links that have been shared on Facebook, I have to say that it's quite frankly incredible.

I won't say that I'm stopping forever. I have no doubt that I'll be back sometime later in the year with more daily anecdotes and musings. But until then, thank you again. Matt x

Day 15: The Day I Tried Horse Riding

One of my New Year's resolutions is to try and make the most out of 2012. So when I arranged to see my friend Dan Rosen today, we decided to book ourselves onto a horse riding class. I know nothing about horses, I've never ridden one before and I've never even really had an urge to. But it was something a bit different, and I'll try anything once.

When I called up to book the lesson yesterday, the woman asked how much Rosen and I weigh. I told her my weight, and couldn't help but laugh when I told her how light Rosen was. Rosen is just over six foot tall and last time I checked, weighed in at a puny eight and a half stone. He's so thin he has to run around in the shower to get wet, and so pale that he's almost transparent like a newborn fish.

In my head I had visions of leaping onto the back of a stallion and galloping off into the woods like a scene from War Horse or Black Beauty. The reality was slightly different...a kids' group riding lesson around a small, manure infested, square pen, where Rosen and I were the oldest riders by about twenty years. We were both introduced to our horses and our leaders. Mine was a thirteen year old girl.

I was helped onto the horse by a nine year old boy who didn't seem to mind that my horse was trying to lick his head off. Within seconds my hands were painfully numb from the cold. I kept whinging to the girl who was leading my horse until she eventually gave in and leant me her pink gloves.

Rosen's horse was beautiful. A white stallion with a long flowing mane. It rode calmly and smoothly around the pen, causing Rosen little trouble whatsoever. Mine, however, looked like a cross between Camilla Parker Bowles and Boris Johnson and spent the entire lesson jerking its head up and down like a Jibba Jabba doll. 'She gets very irritated', my leader warned me. 'Someone rode her yesterday and she bucked them off'. That filled me with loads of confidence.

I'm not quite sure if I actually enjoyed the lesson or not. I had no idea what I was doing and had to put up with a middle aged female instructor shouting at me for an entire hour from the middle of the pen. 'Keep your feet in the stirrups', 'Choke down on the reins', 'Use the rhythm of the horse'. Too much for one lesson, in my opinion. I had no idea what stirrups were, I didn't know how to hold the reins, and I only just about knew what a horse was.

After about 45 minutes of going round and round the pen aimlessly, the instructor told us that we were going to try and break into a trot. 'Is that faster or slower than a gallop?', I asked my thirteen year old leader, whose hands had turned red from frostbite. She seemed shocked at my ignorance. 'Slower', she replied. 'But she's really quick, so you'll probably have to grip on really tightly with your thighs'.

I've never gripped anything with my thighs before. It's quite uncomfortable. As my horse broke into a trot, I forgot about the cold weather, I forgot about trying to stay balanced on the horse. All I could focus on was my poor testicles which spent the next few minutes being battered relentlessly against the horse's back.

The lesson finished and I was relieved to get off. I limped around the pen, numb from the cold, thighs aching and fairly convinced I was now unable to have children. That's the price I paid for trying something a bit different.