Mahinda’s Little World

I got home late the other night to find a brown paper package leant against my door, with a little yellow rosette.

Ripping open the packaging, I found a copy of Forever Summer.

It was from the lovely Martine, Housemate Stuart’s girlfriend, presumably as a thank-you for helping her out a bit with her laptop.

Now, Nigella Lawson is GREAT. As far as I’m concerned, she strays a long way into “ideal woman” territory. Intelligent, vivacious, loves cooking…

I remember when Nigella Bites was on the telly just after 6pm, when I used to get home from work. It was like having half an hour of your own private pornography.

Lovely lovely Nigella is the very antithesis of the Evil Delia Woman, who is clearly the Antichrist. Unfortunately, not many people online seem to agree with me. DietGirl seems just about the only one who can see the truth. I fear that The End Of Days will come all too soon, and the Clothing Of The Beast shall be a Norwich City scarf.

But I digress.

Thanks, Martine - the book’s absolutely perfect!

Just been on that photographer’s website again, and he’s put the photos from Tuesday up.

There are a few with me in them:

• Ballwinning - before and just before.
• Getting there first. Just.
• Nice composition, with Beth at the centre. I think he likes Beth, as there’s loads of shots of her.
• In full flow. My favourite, complete with sexy sweat patches!

Right then. That’s enough narcissism for now!

Why is it that my sporting performances are so inconsistent?

Take shooting, for example - one week I’ll be shooting 95s and 96s, the next I’ll hit a 92.

Yesterday evening was a case in point. It was the last day of group matches in the summer mixed hockey tournament at Belle Vue, so we had four short 7-a-side matches against various teams in our little division. I played a bit of a blinder.

First off, I scored our first goal of the evening - I won the ball in our D and ran straight to the edge of their D, where I passed to Pinch, kept running at full tilt, and just about managed to guide the return pass into the corner of the goal. Only my 5th ever competitive goal!

Then, I generally ran around like a madman, and hardly put a foot wrong. Passes were going to their intended recipients, and I was happily whizzing past opposing players.

This is NOT what happens most weeks. Sometimes, I could even be described as a bit of a liability.

It’s just that, every so often, for reasons unknown, I jump up a level in terms of energy, skill and awareness. I wish I knew why - at least then I’d have a shot at replicating the conditions. Or whatever.

Unfortunately, I took one hell of a hit on the ring finger (?) of my right hand - ball was coming in from a corner, and our keeper stomped out and wellied it…straight onto my finger, at a range of about a metre. I honestly thought it might be broken, given that I couldn’t really feel it until this morning, but it seems okay now, if a little painful. Just bruising, I s’pose. Ho hum.

Camera Blokey

When Sale Hockey Club went to the Whitsun Hockey Festival, on the Isle of Man, back in May, we met a photographer who was there to cover the festival. He does lots of hockey stuff, apparently, and has been hanging around at Belle Vue for the summer hockey.

Anyway, I tracked down his website this lunchtime - it’s www.johncoxon.com, and has lots and lots of photos online.

A skim through the hockey ones revealed a fair few of our lot from the IoM festival. Notably (in my case at least), this one, which shows Captain Dave buying what looks like my pint of bitter…and this one, which shows Stacey and I dancing like loons.

Nothing on our lot from the summer hockey just yet, although there are a few shots of our other (better) team. Blokey was pitchside yesterday for at least one of our matches, so I’ll have a look in a few days to see whether he’s put up a new gallery.

Mighty Curry

It being possibly the last summer hockey session (but for the fact that we’ve easily qualified for next Tuesday’s finals), we headed out for a curry afterwards.

Possibly not the best move, given that I was meant to be going out for a drink with Jill, but then, I did phone her and she did pretty much convince me that I should go for the curry and not worry about her. To be fair, she did cancel on me on Monday, and we are seeing each other tonight…although she’s not emailed/txted me back…I just hope this doesn’t turn into a repeat of the Eileen thing…

Anyway, we went to the Nawaab in Levenshulme. Basically, it’s a HUGE curry house, converted from an old cinema (via a Mecca bingo hall), which only does a buffet. A HUGE buffet - £10 a head and, unlike many cheap curry buffets, there are plenty of dishes, all of which are pretty decent quality.

Result.

We all ate loads.

For dessert, I discovered an absolute winner of an ice cream - Black Jack flavour! As in, the liquoricey aniseedy Mojo style penny chews.

While not the most appetising of ice creams, being a kind of dirty grey colour, it was most tasty, and went very well with the mint and pistachio flavours they had. I didn’t go near the bubblegum flavour. I don’t think they approve of normal flavours like vanilla, strawberry and chocolate.

Update

Jill’s just txted me back. I shall see her at 7pm. Fabby

I spent almost the entirety of Sunday in bed, with a duvet, laptop and Battlestar Galactica DVDs for company. Absolute bliss.

On Monday morning, however, I realised that I’d completely forgotten about the 24:7 Theatre Festival, which started on Sunday and runs for the rest of this week. It’s sort of like a (very) poor man’s Edinburgh Fringe. The website’s pants, but the shows are good. Well, the ones I’ve seen, anyway.

Last year’s best effort was people’stalking:

Lance is trying to sell his flat, but is hindered by a massive clown who won’t leave. John comes to view the flat and the pair’s secrets come to light, watched by the eyes of the ever-present clown.

The massive clown in question spent most of his time hiding, being subversive, or both. It never became clear who could see the clown - just Lance, everyone, or no-one.

Very bizarre, but utterly compelling.

Anyway, it turns out that my mate Howell had completely forgotten about it as well. Emails flew, and I sent him my annotated list, which basically had four shows I’d quite like to see. It turns out that Howell had picked three of the same four, so we narrowed it down to two, cancelled our Monday night engagements, and went for it.

I emailed/txted a few others, and Phil decided to join us.

We saw two shows:

The First Rule of Comedy
One woman show, in two halves - firstly a stand-up gig (complete with internal monologue) that goes really badly, then a sort of after-dinner speaker affair, set a few years later, about the comic’s trials and tribulations since. Pretty good, although it tailed off a bit towards the end.

The French Lectures
No matter what the above review says, it’s bloody brilliant. We laughed almost all the way through it. Possibly the best way of describing it is to say that it’s like Little Britain, but without the tedious bits.

After all that, we headed to the wondrous drinking establishment that is the Knott Bar for a beer or two. That place is GREAT!

Howell was on top form, as usual…

Howell

My mates view me (I think!) as a highly sociable bloke, who’s always off visiting new places and doing random stuff.

I view Howell as a highly sociable bloke, who’s always off visiting new places and doing random stuff.

The man’s like a walking City Life. Not so much “finger on the pulse” as “watching the big machine that goes BEEP”.

Stuff he’s done includes:

• Staking out supposedly haunted places all night, looking for ghosts.
• Going to Japan to meet Monkey…even having dinner with Monkey’s wife.
• Starring in various highly amusing videos made by film student mates (etc.) back at university.

I’ve known him for a couple of years now, and he still surprises me on a regular basis. Last night, it was the story of his trip to a Tokyo toilet showroom, complete with musical lavatories and high pressure water jets. Oh, and he’s now playing in the Manchester touch rugby league.

The fact that Howell is (until you get to know him) just a fairly nondescript, quiet little Welsh guy, really adds to the effect.

On Saturday evening, I got to see Jonathan and Simon’s house for the first time. Odd, seeing that I must have driven past it (on the way home from work) hundreds of times.

This is more than just a house. It’s a techie’s paradise! EVERY room has network points. Even the toilet - I asked and, apparently, it has two ports. The lights, the music, the phones, even the doors are all connected in. Or soon will be, in some cases. Once complete, Jonathan and Simon will be able to control which doors can be opened by which (electronic) key, and lock/unlock them at will. The basement’s been converted into an electronics workshop that had me almost drooling.

It’s been something of a labour of love - just running all the cables would have been a nightmare, never mind connecting them all up.

In short, it’s just bloody amazing.

I want.

Katy and Rick’s barbecue was a bit of a success. As is to be expected from those two, there was an awful lot of good quality meat, fine ales and random conversation. A fair crowd turned up in the end - Justin and Helen, Adam and Sarah, Pete, Rosy and Malcolm were all there, plus guest appearances from Katy and Rick’s neighbours, who seemed friendly enough - just what you want in your neighbours, really.

Malcolm (who’d cycled one and a half hours to get there) and I ended up crashing over - him in the spare room, and me on the seriously comfortable sofa. So comfortable, in fact, that I only awoke at 1.30pm. Ooops. Katy, angel that she is, quickly furnished me with a bacon sandwich, tea and croissant, and we settled down in front of the cricket for a while.

I eventually made my excuses and left, heading over to Stockport for a CAMRA U30 meet, at the Porter’s Railway. A lovely pub, with lovely beer. The Manchester CAMRA Under 30 crowd is a pretty good little bunch, and far removed from the “beards and beerguts” stereotype - obviously, we’re all fairly young, and we’re just a bunch of people who like good beer. Like you’d find in any pubs up and down the country. Tim, Kim, Matt, Amy and Richard have taken the mantle of the U30 group over from the legend that is Dave Hallows, and they seem to be doing a pretty good job.

Unfortunately, I was driving so could only have one pint…well, two halves - with a selection like they had there, I just had to try two beers. Half-pint glasses just feel wrong. Made it last though, and have just got home, via Tesco’s for a sandwich and an engagement card. My next port of call today is Simon and Debbie’s engagement party, which I’ll just pop into for an hour or so before joining Rachel and Richard for pretty much their last night in Manchester. The jazz (nice!) of Matt ‘n’ Phred’s beckons…

It’s 5 o’clock, and I’m the last one left in the office. Just killing a bit of time now before I head off to Katy and Rick’s barbecue, in nearby Lymm. So I’ve got Morcheeba coming out of my speakers and the Write Post page open.

Hockey-in-the-park last night - best turnout for a while, with 14 or us there, including AJ coming back for more. He’s really quite skilful, just a bit lacking in fitness and touch. That’ll improve. It was a really fun session, and I ended up absolutely knackered. No change there, then.

In t’pub afterwards, Katy and Rick decided to have a barbecue. At their house, rather than right there and then - while fairly used to a bunch of muddy hockey types turning up every so often, I don’t think he’d take too kindly to us lighting up at the bar.

So, that’s where I’m going tonight.

Got three things on tomorrow - a CAMRA U30 social in Stockport, Simon and Debbie’s engagement party in Sale, and Rachel’s hen night (-ish) in Manchester city centre. Don’t know yet exactly what Rachel’s got planned, but suspect I may not be able to pop into Simon’s do at all. *sigh* Never mind.

Guess I’d better fire up MultiMap and figure out where I’m going!

This evening, I went down to the rifle range. I usually shoot on a Monday, so I don’t see much of the Wednesday bunch at all. This was my first Wednesday shoot.

I got there to find Shiela and Dennis killing time - they’d forgotten to bring their mechanisms, so couldn’t shoot, and they didn’t fancy the hour-long round trip home to fetch them. The mechanisms are basically the bits that do the firing - on some rifles, it’s a trigger, loading lever and springy bit; on others, it’s just a bolt. Either way, you can’t shoot without it. Gun law means that rifles and their mechanisms must be locked away separately, and each mechanism will only work with its own gun.

Anyway, it was only the mighty Ken Ridley and I shooting. He’s the best shooter in the club, i.e. pretty damn good. On last season’s average, I ranked second…clearly rubbish - I had a very good season, but I’m just Not That Good. Turned out that we were shoulder to shoulder, both shooting cards for the first team, in round 7 of the Cheshire competition - beat that for pressure. I’ve been shooting really badly of late (hence the decision to go down on Wednesdays for extra practice), but managed to pull out a 97 (out of 100). I was reasonably chuffed. I try to be around the 95/6 mark, but have been closer to 93/4 of late.

Ken? He scored 98. His comment? “Below average.”

That’s the mark at which I’ve got to aim. Literally.

One of the problems with being me is that there just aren’t many Mahindas (Mahindi? Mahindae?) on t’internet.

I mean, anyone looking for this blog isn’t exactly going to have much trouble. Here’s where this page currently appears when you Google stuff:

• “mahinda” - third page
• “mahinda blog” - third item
• “mahinda hockey” - first item
• “mahinda shooting” - first item
• “mahinda rifle” - first item

I haven’t mentioned MUGSS in the blog (until now!), but that’d make it really easy for anyone to find it. Oops

Bizarrely enough, Googling “amandhi” (my sister’s name) now spits out this blog as the first hit. Of course, all the other hits (on the first page, at least) are for her.

Better make sure I don’t say anything incriminating!

Last night’s little tryst went pretty well.

Beyond that, I couldn’t possibly comment

We’re both quite busy types, so it’s becoming a bit of a weekly thing - I’ll see her next on Monday.

My shooting’s really going to suffer this summer