But I spent a fair while on getting the site design right, the set-up, even the nice dog logos. I flatter myself that this is actually quite a decent blog construction, as they go. But alas, the actual topic didn’t quite push my buttons hard enough. Plus I had a bit of a personal setback around the turning of the year which made me a bit less inclined to tell others how to live their lives.

So, I wanted to actually give the site a clear end point, but I guess I’m saying I probably won’t be updating here anymore. If I have anything I particularly want to say about life and how to live it, I’ll just shove it on the Nick Bryan Dot Com site, along with pictures, links, anything else I do really. The ludicrously frequent Twitter updates will persist, of course.

And I’ll one day think of a blog concept that hangs together a bit better. If there’s one ongoing message from this site, I guess it’s something about how moderation is always possible. No need to, y’know, get too stressed or extreme about stuff.

But I also find myself becoming less useful in most other ways. I read somewhere that sport was meant to make me burst forth into my life, more energised and healthy or some such. At least, eventually, once I’ve gotten used to it.

And yet, after six months of regular sporting effort, I still find myself spending the remainder of these Saturdays crashed out on my bed, stirring only to watch TV and moan on Twitter about how tired and achy I am. So, is this a normal reaction? Do regular active people have to simply accept that, by doing sport, they are accepting the rest of that day whirling away down the crapper?

(This is without mentioning that, on strenuous weeks, I can look forward to losing most of the following day as well. Oh, and that my attempts to socialise immediately after badminton have often ended in physical or emotional carnage.)

I have multiple books to try and edit, dammit. Not to mention various other endeavours to support. Am I just unfit? Is the answer to my grudge against exercise… doing more exercise? Because, obviously, that’s quite upsetting. I’ve barely finished slapping myself on the back for managing to do this tiny amount.

Never mind. At least eventually it will stop being summer, the burning energy-sucking heat will recede and this problem will improve by a fraction.

Since we entered the hot spell of the year, it’s become a regular thing that I go for a “nap” at around ten and wake up in the middle of the night, often unable to yank myself up from sleep and brush my teeth. So instead I just lie there all night, jerking conscious every two hours but never actually moving.

With the light on, still in my clothes and the computer still running. It’s a pretty dignified way to relax, yeah. I blame the hot weather, making me feel tired and pass out at strange intervals. The single beer I drank earlier in the evening may not have helped.

And I was going to write another blog post for this site last night, had I not been so busy sleeping. So instead you’re getting this, which I’ve tossed off rather quickly (as you may have guessed).

Of course, sleep is theoretically a good thing, I probably don’t get enough of it. And normally I trick myself out of getting more through coffee or sheer willpower. But in the sticky months, I’m sure it’s possible to get a bit too much. I mean, I almost had eight whole hours there, which is psychotic.

Plus, it feels like I’m half-arsing it rather. If I’m going to sleep, it’d be nice to have the option of changing into pyjamas and turning out the light, rather than waking up confused and slightly sticky. (No, not like that, you sickos.)

Also, I now don’t feel especially rested. So, if I’m going to try and bend this into advice, I guess it would be… if you feel really tired, consider just going to bed. Instead of having a “quick rest” that lasts all night.

Still, the day won’t stop merely because I’m utterly unprepared for it. At least I have managed to produce a blog entry of almost-normal length…

In actual fact, it was rather the other way around. Whenever I have had to answer the telephone to an unfamiliar caller since, I have done so with all the enthusiasm and confidence of a Vietnam vet having a flashback to the Killing Fields.

So, why is this? What happens in those places? Why doesn’t working in a call centre prepare you for anything else useful? Well…

The Imminent Automaton

When answering a personal telephone, I operate a simple approach, represented below:

• Will talking to you entertain me sufficiently to stave off the coma?
• Will talking to you help me in the accomplishment of some task?
• Will talking to you benefit anyone, in any way whatsoever?

If the answer to all of the above is no, I feel can get away with disposing of them, using whatever degree of rudeness and profanity I feel inclined towards.

In call centres, it’s almost similar. Except the script is rather more complicated, often involves multiple forks in the road, sometimes exists only as an unwritten series of criteria and deliberately leaves you utterly wedged in the toilet if you stray into an area it doesn’t cover. (So that management have wiggle room to swoop in and make the big decisions.)

So actually, it’s not that similar really. No free will. You are the one doing the talking, but you may as well be gagged and trapped in a car boot, as it sails over a cliff. Into an off-shore oil spillage. (Ooh, topical.)

The Big Stall

So when one finally walks away from the call centre, the prospect of an unknown phone call strikes terror into the heart for a couple of reasons. Firstly, there’s the post-traumatic stress of it all. As mentioned, mysterious voices springing onto the line only provokes flashbacks.

Secondly, whilst still suffering from dizziness and a loss of vision, you have to actually think whilst answering the phone, if you’re on a line other than your own. Unfortunately, this ability has long ago been beaten out of me. At least in The Horrible Land Of Call Centre, I could read the script and know I’d done the bare minimum.

Fortunately, I can still answer my personal phone line without having a panic attack, thanks to the carefully composed three-step guide above. With therapy and patience, I’m hoping to one day advance beyond that.

Anyway, according to the basic three-months-each theory of seasons, the summer starts somewhere around the beginning of June, which is… now. We’ve had a few days of sunshine here in lovely London, interspersed with worse weather. Yesterday I got absolutely soaked all through my skin in a torrential downpour, for example.

Still, in an intermittently snarky advice blog, this seems a good time for some thoughts on what to do when the sun puts his hat on, pulls up his pants and goes to work on us.

Cowering Indoors Is The Easy Way Out

I bet you were expecting me to say “Stay inside! Don’t go out! Stock up on canned produce!” And looking at my previous output, I can see why you might.

But that seems a bit much. I mean, don’t burn yourself to buggery, don’t stand in direct sunlight if it makes you feel uncomfortable and, yes, it is probably going to get rather hot and sweaty in your office. But none of that constitutes a reason to hide indoors.

Do you break out in a bright orange rash and start losing skin by the roll in the event of direct sunlight? See, that’s a reason to stay out of the sun.

The Shade Is Your Friend

But though I try not to hide indoors, I can definitely be found lurking in the shade. Sunlight is nice, direct sunlight is lame. I swear I can feel the skin cancer forming in real time.

Of course, I am a bit pale and spend a lot of time indoors at a computer, so I imagine I’m simply not calibrated correctly. I went to Barcelona once, and spent the entire week dashing from one patch of shade to another, as if trying to dodge enemy fire. Fortunately one of my friends was even paler than I, so I wasn’t entirely alone.

Still, point being: hiding indoors may be excessive, but there’s no shame in staying in the shade a lot of the time. After all, it’s still quite warm.

Rays Of Other

Also seen in the summer… hay fever (annoying), the constant need for air conditioning (uncomfortable), inability to do any exercise aside from the barely-mobile sport of cricket (tragic) and the need to cover your body in a white, oily substance which leaves you unable to keep hold of objects or work your smartphone.

Yeah, I will admit this season irritates me in a few ways. But despite that, I must strive not to hide until it’s over. Even I go and sit in the back garden with my rubbish laptop on really sunny days, because it’s a nice way to do some writing. And don’t let me tell you otherwise when I’m in a bad mood in a couple of weeks.

So instead, I bring you a short guide on how to carry on your normal life when politics really starts dominating everything. I stress, I’m not advocating political apathy; I will be voting and I would never discourage anyone else from doing so, but y’know. We can’t live this stuff all the time. People would die during small talk.

And I’m half-convinced that the level of political bombardment during elections puts people off participating anyway. So, what can one do for peace and quiet?

Cower In The Dark

Based on my experience over the last week or three, it’s going to be all politics, all the time on the news, in the papers; even on Twitter, the issues will dominate. Which is downright disconcerting, because I view Twitter as a massive worldwide broadcasting system for information about what I had for lunch.

So, by logical extension, the only remaining choice is to turn it all off, be impervious to all broadcasts and basically hide? Well, it would probably work, but I think we enjoy feeling like we’re aware of what is going on in some way. If I had no connection whatsoever to the outside world at any time, it would feel wrong.

So, yeah, nice plan if you can work it, but if you don’t want to become a reality-leper, what’s the alternative?

Scheduled Filtration

Sounds a bit like something done to your urine in hospital, doesn’t it?

That aside, this is my basic solution. Once you’ve looked at enough politics crap, you eventually learn the words. Once you know enough of them, assuming you are not struck blind, you can often identify them from a distance and take evasive action. Do not look at news sites on principle, don’t click on links in Twitter messages containing certain keywords, avoid avoid avoid.

Honestly, this is not fool-proof. Eventually something will be too tempting. To be honest, you’d be better off opting for total seclusion, but that would be dull. So just run, fast, in the opposite direction, especially if you’re meant to be doing something else.

People Introductions

Unfortunately, although you can ignore the news and the internet with a burst of effort, other human beings require more effort. A sad side effect of political media saturation is that people keep bloody talking about it, and they don’t have an off-switch. (This blog entry is just another example.)

Luckily, I have developed several techniques for coping with this relentless tedium. The first is to disengage your brain, if possible wander off and do something else. This will make you look like an anti-social bastard, but I, for one, am more willing to do that than I am to be bored.

The second is to talk about something unrelated or, even better, related but much less worthy and more banal. It requires effort, but people will respect your desire to change the subject and eventually cave in. Either because they are secretly tired of it too, or because they are too polite to stop you.

Turn Up And Be Counted

To reiterate my good self from the start of this entry: I am not in any way advocating not voting or participating in democracy. As they once said in The West Wing, “decisions are made by those who show up”. So if you’re entitled to vote, you may as well.

After all, I’m still imagining I’m addressing an audience of cynics here, which means we like to complain about stuff. And we’ll be much more entitled to moan if we’ve made a token effort to swing the outcome our way.

Because it’s a long weekend, don’tcha know. A few times a year, for various reasons, we get Monday off work in order to sit around in our pants and scratch for a day longer. So what can one do with an extra day of holiday? How does it affect you? Let’s see…

Go on a tiny holiday!

I am not sure I’ve ever done this, but I’ve heard the rumours. Apparently some people take the extra day of weekend as a cue to vacate their hometown and go stay in a different one, admire the slightly different town centre, have a couple of nice meals, possibly some geographically dislocated sex, then come back again.

Hence why when transport problems inevitably spring up on these holiday weekends, involving cancelled trains, blocked roads or a volcano grounding aircraft (it could happen!), the complaints are multi-numerous. Still, nice work if you can get it. Many don’t.

Make tedious small talk!

“So, what’ve you got planned for the long weekend?”

I’ve had this conversation so many times in the last four days that I pretty much want to cry. Including myself, because I’m as guilty as anyone for using it as, y’know, a thing to say.

And all I have discovered is that most people I know don’t go on tiny holidays, they simply use it as an extra day of weekend. So more time to see friends, do personal projects, housework… yeah. Hence the name “long weekend” I suppose.

Go shopping!

Wait, no, you can’t. Well, you can try, but there’s a good chance that half the stuff you want will be randomly closed, unless you want food from a supermarket. Or live in central London, where they don’t really care about holidays, aside from perhaps Christmas.

And part of me suspects you could probably go buy mediocre designer tat on Oxford Street even on Christmas Day. Oh, and you can’t take the extra day to do domestic administration tasks because the banks, post offices and governmental departments will almost certainly be closed.

Afterword

In many ways, the best part of these holiday weekends actually comes afterwards. That being, of course, the four day week. Yes, you’ll probably spend half the time confused about what day it is, but at least you don’t have to do as much work. Which, to be honest, can’t be bad.

In order to ensure future updates are slightly more timely, I’m considering moving into a castle, perhaps with some form of moat. <Insert predictable joke about MP expenses here.>

Anyway, in order to keep this relevant to real life (mine, not your’s), I thought I’d try and explain what I should have done weeks ago if I genuinely cared about you, lovely blog readers. Yes, to keep FTBD ticking over, I should have long ago ditched all the “friends” who distract me from updating it. How? Well…

Offensive Jokes

I gather I have acquired a reputation for these. So clearly this isn’t a good tip for ditching your chums, as I still have them. But I guess I only make the really horrific ones when I know the audience will let me get away with it.

See, if I really wanted to jettison all distractions, I should start doing this indiscriminately. No business meeting or conversation with an elderly relative should be safe from a reference to bloody death, bodily fluids or bowel movements. (Especially the latter. It’s funny because it’s poo!)

I am due to give a speech in September, as best man at my best friend’s wedding. I gather this is being feverishly anticipated among our mutual friends as the day I am beaten to death by a lynch mob of offended relatives and fans of classy anecdotes.

Stand Them Up

Last week, I double booked myself a few times, through sheer bad memory. Usually, I realised within a few minutes/hours and corrected the issue. But… what if I hadn’t?

Seriously, think about it. If you want to thin out the herd of your friends, without having to do anything whatsoever: arrange stuff with them, then don’t turn up. Give only extremely unconvincing excuses, or mumble something about “forgetting”.

Doing this to someone once will put a black mark against your name for a while. Become a serial lurch-leaver and you will be lucky if anyone ever talks to you again.

Extreme? Maybe. But these things are necessary if you want to thin the herd without resorting to mass slaughter.

Mass Slaughter

Kidding. <Insert predictable joke about Holocaust here.>

Bad Things

The above options will get people to avoid you through simply appearing to be undesirable company. But, if that doesn’t work, you might have to turn nasty and go on the offensive against those who use up your valuable blogging time.

Y’know, by punching them in the face, stealing their stuff, involving yourself sexually with their friends/family/ex, keying their car, teaching their dog to crap indoors, teaching their child some jokes about rohypnol for the playground, borrowing their stuff and throwing it in the sea, offering to fix multiple things for them and breaking them all “by accident”, documenting their sordid secrets on your blog/Twitter/billboard in Leicester Square… that kinda thing.

I should probably include some disclaimer to any real life friends reading that, yes, I do love you all really. Despite all the dubious jokes. But they’re probably all used to this kind of grumpy rambling from me by now anyway.

On Easter Sunday. Which, at least, seems to be a happy day. Of course, the reason you should be chipper may vary, as Easter has become even more schizophrenic in its meaning than Christmas. After literally minutes of careful consideration and no research whatsoever, I believe I have managed to separate the three excuses one might find to be cheerful on Easter Sunday.

If none of these make you happy, then… I dunno. Time to start drinking, I suppose.

Religion

You might not be religious; I’m not, especially. I was Catholic a long time ago, but I’ve lapsed over the years. So much so that I almost put a paedo joke in this paragraph, before deciding it wouldn’t really be in the spirit of what I’m trying to write.

Because religion, regardless of its scandals, extremists and other bad things that it is sometimes tied up with, makes a lot of people happy. It provides comfort, solace, joy, other nice words, and I don’t really feel inclined to deny that to the faithful just because others use it as an excuse to be big tossers.

And to be honest, if you declare all religious people to be crap because a few of them use it to justify homophobia or whatever, then… look, surely you don’t need me to spell out the hypocrisy for you? Anyway, Easter is a big festival for Christians, Christ conquers death and stuff, and I hope you all enjoy it. Was my point. A while ago.

Springtime

If the resurrection of the Lord (or his son, I’m a bit fuzzy on the details) doesn’t float your boat, don’t worry, I have more. It is spring, after all. The weather improves, animals start humping and the clocks change so it is no longer dark when we leave work.

I like the springtime, for reasons I believe I outlined way back in my autumnal blogging saga. Basically, winter is stingingly cold and summer uncomfortably hot, but autumn and spring seem to be about right. The sunshine is pleasant without being oppressive, and I don’t have to open my windows all the time to avoid slowly roasting in my room.

So, religion be damned, it’s a nice time of year. And, especially in 2010 where we’ve had some bloody freezing weather so far, Easter seems to be floating at the start of it. There are pagan-type people who will agree with me, I think.

Chocolate

The above two points were quite good, I think. Genuine, heart-warming, etcetera. But we’re apparently targeting cynics here, and I know I don’t always feel that bothered about that kind of thing. I sit indoors, I sulk, I stew and I often eat chocolate.

Luckily, Easter once again proves itself the best festival of happiness for all, by including Dairy Milk in its purview. Truly, this is the day of inclusion.

Anyway, this has been a cheerful interlude, because it’s quite a pleasant occasion, I feel. Despite the fact that I don’t bother with religion, the weather here is distinctly average and I haven’t yet had any chocolate. Never mind.

And now, it is Good Friday, in which we get a day off work to… celebrate… the Messiah… dying? I mean, I know he conquers death and comes back (I was a Catholic once) but we aren’t doing that until Sunday are we?

So in order to mark this occasion ethically, shouldn’t we be spending today in utter misery? Crying, wearing black, rending our clothes, etcetera? Why is it even called “Good Friday”? Are we glad he’s dead? (I did Google it, apparently it might be a corruption of “God’s Friday.)

With that in mind, here are some depressing thoughts for you to enjoy on this incredibly miserable day.

Have You Failed At Lent Yet?

The end of Lent is a-coming. You know, that period in which you’re meant to give stuff up to try and mirror Jesus fasting in the desert. Only instead of going without food and facing down the devil, we deprive ourselves of falafel and feel mildly annoyed.

You’ve now been forty days without cigarettes/ food/alcohol/sex/fun/going to the toilet, haven’t you? Not failed in any way? Going well? Feeling good about yourself? Probably going to be having a massive binge by Monday even if you have been successful?

If you took all that on board with a smile, congrats. You’ve really achieved something now.

You May Feel Ill On Monday

I felt pretty sick by Easter Monday last year. Like, really sick. Like, ate too much chocolate. And drank too much. And sat around at home quite a lot, being lazy. This could happen to you too!

Obviously, there are ways to avoid it, by practising tedious “common sense”. These methods are so obvious that I am not going to waste time typing them out. But for most of us, the fun is worth the pain. Certainly, I’m hungover already and have more to do before I finish.

But I’m just saying. You may not feel at your best on Monday, and you’ll have the prospect of returning to work to think about too.

But At Least You Aren’t Dead And Attached To Some Wood!

I tried to think of another depressing point, but I just can’t bring myself to keep it up. After all, I have four days off work starting now, there’s fun scheduled for them, I don’t see that I have much to moan about.

Not to mention, I didn’t bother giving up anything for Lent. Nor do I care if I feel ill next week. So why worry about it? Happy Good Friday, all. Hope to see you again soon.