Mahinda’s Little World

I’m going to have Snow White over for Christmas dinner.

No, really.

There’s no need to summon the men in white coats just yet.

Emily’s spent the last couple of weeks playing Snow White, in panto at Southport Theatre. I trekked over to see the show yesterday evening, dragging Nicola along for company. Unfortunately, we got there 10-15 minutes late, having been caught unawares by the traffic on the M6. Still, apparently we didn’t miss too much — it’s not like we didn’t know the story!

We were ushered to our seats, which turned out to be next to Em’s mother. This didn’t seem like much of a coincidence at the time — it was only later that Em told us that the two sets of tickets had been booked completely separately, a couple of weeks apart. So, the lady to whom I turned and asked "You must be Emily’s mum, then?" really could have been anyone! In my defence, there is a fair family resemblance.

After the show, it was to The Lakeside Inn – "the smallest pub in the Britain" — for a drink or two. I have to take umbrage with that claim, unfortunately — there’s at least one smaller pub in Manchester, and I’m pretty sure I’ve seen smaller in York. I believe the "official" smallest pub in Britain is in Bury St. Edmunds, however — The Nutshell. I walked past it once, I think, but it was full.

So, size of pub notwithstanding, we chatted away merrily, and it turned out that Emily was doing Christmas with her friend Martin (I think), and was open to suggestions — of course, I was going to be all on my lonesome this Christmas, and somehow the plan became a nice big meal at my place. Which is nice. There will be Trivial Pursuit, and possibly Risk as well. Oh, and lots of exciting nibbles, and perhaps one or two alcoholic beverages. No dwarves, though. I’m really rather looking forward to it.

I’ll have execute Plan A* some other time, I s’pose. Shame

* Me, a selection of high quality ales, and The Lord Of The Rings in its extended DVD entirety.

Well, almost. The festive season has rather crept up on me this year. Maybe it’s the distinct lack of Christmas parties…although, to be honest, I have been to several…but none of them felt Christmassy enough.

Now, as the vaguely atheistic child of a Buddhist-by-default* and a not-particularly-bothered Hindu, Christmas isn’t something I’ve ever celebrated…well, the spiritual side, anyway. No presents, basically.

* In much the same way that most of the UK population is Protestant.

Of course, I’ve lived all my life in a fundamentally Christian country, with Christian festivals — my friends celebrate Christmas, to varying degrees admittedly, but most with at least a nod to the whole spiritual "Christ was born on this day" thing.

I like the festival — it’s clearly an EFAP (Excuse For A Party), and I get some time off work…we’ve got to have a real tree, with sparkly stuff as well. However, I don’t send cards and I don’t give presents. But are these part of the spiritual side, or just the party side? It just doesn’t seem "right" to me. Every so often, I have sent a few cards, and the odd gift…but I’ve always felt a bit of a charlatan doing so. Even when it’s a mass email "card" — this year, I’ve not even had the time to do that.

The idea of sending cards is a good one — it’s a handy excuse to drop someone a line you’ve not seen for ages, or send out a quick "this is what I’m up to" update. And that brings us on to the trigger for this post. Christmas cards that I have received. Quite a few, in fact — I got home tonight to find five or six on the letters shelf, bringing the total up to 20.

I appreciate every single one — I mean, who doesn’t appreciate a (non-bill) envelope addressed to themself, expressing best wishes from a far-away friend? The problem is, with each one comes a little twinge of guilt.
Aaaaw, so and so have sent me a card — I’ve not seen them in aaages! I wonder what they’re up to? I really should drop them a line…

…and then I never do. I’m RUBBISH at keeping in touch.

All these lovely people have sent me cards this year (in no particular order):

• Will and Cath — Most Welsh Card
• Mark, Karen, Emma and Ciaran — Wintriest Card (brrr!)
• Emma — Most Corporate Card
• Pete and Wendy — Penguinest Card
• Katy and Rick — Sockiest Card
• Pete and Sarah — Belliest Card
• Workmate Maxine — Most Unexpected Card
• Jen and Will — Smallest Card
• Alsion — Most Handmade Card
• Natalie — Squiggliest-Signed Card
• Claire — Most Informative Card
• Linden — Cutest Card (it’s got a baby seal on it!)
• Helen and Dimitris — Snowiest Card
• Matt, Fran, Charlotte and Andrew — Most Fertile Card
• Chris and Sarah — Classiest Card
• Debbie and Mike — Most Joyous Card
• Howell — Most Random Card (Kermit the Frog, Japanese best wishes AND a haiku!)
• Sarah (Tall, I think) — Most Pastel Card
• Becky S — Most Christian Card
• Sarah M — Smelliest Card (having shared an envelope with some vanilla pods)

As for my favourite…well, Claire’s, Chris & Sarah’s, Tall’s and Alsion’s are all up there…but it’s got to be Sarah M’s. As though stuck-on trees, little shiny balls and the faint aroma of vanilla weren’t enough, it’s full of sparkly purple prose. Well, sparkly purple writing, anyway

Feel privileged, dear reader. This is that ultra-rare thing on Mahinda’s Little World - a post made from the (relative) comfort of my own living room.

I brought my work laptop home to do some reviewing - it’s 2am now, I’ve just finished (admittedly, I only started at 10.30pm), and have decided that, in a week following-on from Test matches in Australia and New Zealand*, it’s still not quite bedtime.

* New Zealand featured closer matches and, more importantly, the team I was supporting (Sri Lanka) did well. Unlike, say, England.

Besides which, I’ve got the morning off tomorrow. It’s silly, really - with major product releases in Jan and Feb, this is my busiest time of year…and I’m taking days off that have to be used before Christmas lest I lose them forever. You used to be able to carry 5 days of your allowance to the following year, which would have suited me everyone - the company would have gotten 2.5 days more work out of me during a crucial period, and I would have gotten 2.5 more days somewhere in the sun next year.

Hey ho.

Anyway, blogging. What have I been up to, of late?

Sports

Shooting. Badly, at the moment - working extra-hard means square eyes used to staring at a screen about twelve inches away…not good for concentrating on "a glorified full stop 25 yards away".

Badminton. The weekly session rolls on, with variable results. We’ll see how it goes in the new year.

Hockey. Had the last practice session of the year on Tuesday, and a club friendly on Saturday - lots of Sale players turned up, were divided into teams, and set off against each other. My side (whites - old and large) dominated the first half, but ended up losing heavily to the opposition (yellows - young and quick).

Ceilidh

The Bumper Christmas Edition of Manchester Ceilidh was fun…after a fashion. The first band, the "rock/metal/traditional ceilidh band" were good, but the calling wasn’t. Partly because it was drowned out by the guitars, and partly because the caller just didn’t allow for the sheer number of ceilidh newbies who seemed to crawl out of the woodwork.

No idea why, but it made it pretty difficult - the first dance I took part in was an utter farce. It required sets of 6 couples…and it turned out that we had 7. Rather than rectifying this, the couple at the end spent the entire time talking to the couple at the end of the neighbouring set…meaning that, by the time me and one of the girls had sorted things out, we’d missed the whole walk-through. And it wasn’t one that we could pick up.

The second band - the two house bands (of sorts) united was ace - a lot of the newbies seemed to disappear, and more regulars take the floor. I ended up being farmed out by Fern (friend of Ceilidh Cat) to her two housemates, Jen and Jenny, who’d not been before. In fact, Rosy and I spent much of the evening chatting/dancing away with those three, as well as Ceilidh Cat when she turned up…with new boyfriend, Non-Dancing Dave.

It all went on until 1am, when the DJ started as promised. He did a pretty good job of absolutely clearing the floor, by playing strange housey stuff, so off home we went.

Leeds Hattrick Boozer

Saturday saw me head to Leeds for a Christmas boozer with the Hattrick lads. After I’d managed to free my lower back a bit - it had seriously seized up after hockey, causing me a lot of pain - I caught a train across the Pennines.

I eventually found the others in Firefly, a bar notable for its 2-for-1 cocktails. I had a mojito and a caipirinha, both of which were nice and relatively manly…at least compared to Arkroyal’s pink efforts.

We headed on to a the Cockpit to wait for a few others (in case any turned up, which they didn’t), and played table football. After that, it was off to some poncey bar with poncey prices - I saw a bottle of interesting lager, and went straight for it, only to find that it cost OVER FOUR WHOLE POUNDS

After that bar (no idea what it was called, but it featured a mezzanine, purple lighting, and orange lamps) we said goodbye to the York contingent*, who had to catch a particularly rubbish 11pm train back due to engineering works. The rest of us** headed over to Wire, a rather splendid indie club. It used to be called Think Tank, and it was great then, and now it’s re-opened as much the same place with a bit of a scrub-up. It reminds me very much of The Venue, my favoured Manchester haunt back when I was a student (which is now either basement flats, or a car park for above-ground flats).

* AndersAnderinho/Andy, Impurity/Ben, Geeka/??? and ArkRoyal/Steve.

** Andiell/Andi, Waterhoose/Pete, SuperG/Graham, Madbias/Toby and (of course!) muggins here.

Anyway, we paid a whopping £6 to get in, before 11pm, and there was some lighthearted banter with the staff concerning the emptyness of the club and the lack of discount entry. Drinks happened, as did drunken crazy dancing. Two girls vaguely joined us - Racquel from York (cute brunette) and her mate from Leeds (cute blonde) - which was nice. Unfortunately, Andi had to take Toby home early, as he was flaking out. Graham joined him, leaving just me and Pete. Pete was pretty miffed, as he had been convinced not to take the 11.55pm train home. By then, we had to stay for the 3.10am.

We eventually left, heading to a fish ‘n’ chip shop en-route to the station - GENIUS! Reasonable-quality fish and chips after 2am! The station featured two groups of people - those waiting for the 2.45am rail replacement bus to York, and those of us waiting for the 3.10am back to MancLand. A fairly varied bunch, most united by drunkeness.

We eventually got on the train - Leeds must be the only station in the UK where the platforms are policed so strictly - and got chatting to two groups:

• Some drunken revellers, out for a girl’s birthday and heading back to Huddersfield.

  We found a half-finished bottle of rosé under our table, which one of the lads drank, and there was something about shoes. My hip-flask full of Vana Tallinn came in useful, too.

• Two sisters and their grandmother (I think), on their way to Manchester Airport for a 9am(!) flight to Oman, to see their parents.

  They were sober but tired. One sister was blonde, with a perfectly straight nose, while the other was brunette, with a slightly curved nose. I made much of the nasal difference - at first glance, they didn’t seem like sisters, but you gradually spotted similar mannerisms, smiles, etc. Hope they caught their flight without much trouble.

Pete and I eventually got to Manc Piccadilly, and headed over to the bus station. 4.30am was the next bus home, so we waited. And waited. And got on the bus. And slept. Well, I did, anyway, waking up every few stops. Pete shook me awake at Withington, and it was straight to bed…except that it wasn’t! The cricket was on, specifically Sri Lanka vs. New Zealand, which I watched until close of play before finally heading to bed.

——–

And now it’s gone 2.30am. Bed beckons, although I might put some washing on first…

The second instalment of last Saturday’s shenanigans. Not that they were particularly shenanigansy, of course…

The MUGSS Do

As usual, the works do clashed with the MUGSS Christmas Ball. As with last year, I had a cunning plan. This year, however, it worked. The few of us still there were kicked out of Old Trafford at 1am, so I meandered over to the tram stop and (eventually) caught a tram into town. Then, it was straight over to Emma, Mia and Jen’s flat for the MUGSS afterparty. Sorted.

Talked to lots of people, including a few new ones - Jen(?), who played lots of hockey at school, Sarah B, and the fantastically-named Tasoula, who I’ll forever now know as "Talicious".

The traditional* game of I Have Never was played, and those of us still there** ended up sloping off home at 3.30am or so.

* Well, it’s happened twice now, so there.

** I think it was Jordan, Rosy, Si, me, Sparks, Sarah B and Talicious. Possibly a Kendler too, but I think he’d left by then. Ian begged a sofa and stayed over, and of course there were the residents of the flat. Not sure where Becky S was at this point, but something tells me she might have been with us as well.

The Bus Home

The 3.30am 143 to West Dids and beyond was absolutely rammed, so we (Rosy, Jordan and me, although I’m sure there were one or two others) ended up standing at the front. Well, with us was a chap with many many facial piercings, and a kebab (wrapping secured with a strip of electrical tape). He turned out to be my very own stalker, knowing the following details about me:

• My name’s "Mahinda Kultrane". Well, close enough. Not sure why people insist on chopping two syllables out of my surname, but it’s a common mistake.
• I was a UMIST chemical engineering student in a former life.
• I’m a tech writer.
• I sometimes drink in The Railway, West Didsbury.
• I sometimes play tennis in Fog Lane park.

Eeek!

His name turned out to be Tim, and I honestly didn’t recognise him at all. I was just a bit on edge at this point - I was sure that I’d recognise anyone from my year, and most from the years above and below. So I said as much, and he replied that he wasn’t in my year.

It took me until Fallowfield to figure it out - he used to have green hair! He was two years below me at uni, and took over Ecstatic, the departmental magazine, which I’d had a hand in during 3rd year. He eventually dropped out of Chem Eng, into Physics, and is now a roadie for bands like The Damned. Hence the piercings.

I can think of people (female, mostly) that I’d rather have stalking me, to be honest.

Hockey Can Be Dangerous

I completely forgot to mention the hockey match that took place before the events of Saturday evening. We were at home against Chester, and I got back my favoured spot on the right of defence. It was a bit like old times - the 1st XI had poached lots of our players, so we’d drafted in a few of my old 3rd XI buddies, as they didn’t have a game that day.

I think I had a pretty good game, and it ended up a very entertaining 0-0 draw.

One event that does bear note, however, is me almost sending some poor chap into hospital. I took a free hit on the sideline…and got it a bit wrong. I hit the ball with some serious power, but accidentally undercut it a bit - so that it flew up and smacked an opposing player in the throat about 10yds away. Possibly less.

He dropped like a stone. As you’d tend to when hit in a soft area by a 3"-diameter ball of hard plastic travelling at 100mph or so.

FORTUNATELY, it hit him in the hollow of his left shoulder. 2" lower, and his collarbone would have taken one hell of a whack. 2" higher, and it could have been a fractured jaw. 2" to the right, and his larynx might have come into play.

No lasting harm done, then, but I’ll bet he was sore in the morning. Probably still is, five days later!

The bloke certainly knew he was in a game - a few minutes later, he got caught in the head by Steve’s elbow. Just after that, I pretty much rugby tackled him in the D - just a trip in the general melée, and we got caught up as I fell.

All that, and he’s ginger. Poor sod.

I should also mention that, as I was leaving the pitch, I heard a female voice call out "Hello Mahinda!" It was Hannah, one of the dancing girls from the Alty Garrick panto, about to play for Timperley against one of our ladies’ teams. I’d forgotten that she played hockey. Hannah must be 18 or 19 now, but I still think of her as a 14-year-old in a leotard!

Anyway, it had been almost a year to the day since I last bumped into her - at 5th Ave in fact, as blogged here. Spooky!

I wrote a long blog post yesterday, but my PC crashed and I lost the damn thing. Bugger.

So I suppose I’ll try again…

It’s already the 12th of December. Christmas has rather crept up on me this year, to be honest, and it doesn’t feel anywhere near as festive. It might just be hindsight, but last year felt a lot more special.

I suppose the Goonie thing was at its height, and I definitely had a bit more spare time…at the moment, I seem to be in transition between one group of friends (who have moved away, or may do in the near future) and another (as yet unspecified).

Take a look at my December 2005 posts - it’s scary just how recent it all seems!

The Works Do

Another year, another work Christmas bash. This year’s wasn’t quite as exciting as last year’s…fortunately! The FULL story of that night wasn’t written up then, and it’s not going to be written up now. I do try to be a gentleman sometimes, you know.

So, this year. Thanks to the ever-dwindling number of staff round here, we had a mere four tables in an Old Trafford* function suite, which was shared with several other companies. The most intriguing other firm was the table next to us - 10 or so women with the card saying that they were a plumbing firm. It turns out that they were an all-female firm of plumbers. They scare me.

* That’s the original one, not the football stadium.

The meal was nice (and plentiful), conversation was good. I did end up dancing with Ange, a workmate’s girlfriend - she wasn’t taking no for an answer - and (a bit later, I think) Jo, a workmate. At one point it was just Jo and I on the floor being silly to I Am The Resurrection. Oops.

Bizarrely enough, I spent quite a while talking to Ange about breasts. Specifically, the boy (at her school) who’d been the first to grab hers. The conversation didn’t come out of nowhere, fortunately - another workmate’s girlfriend had been to the same school and knew the same boy, who did it to everyone. Apparently, he’d taken her to the cinema, then out for a walk in the moonlight…it went pretty much like this:

Boy looks at curl of hair resting on Ange’s forehead.

Boy says "You’ve got lovely curls."

Boy reaches out and grabs a mammary.

Smooth.

At one point Ange grabbed my left breast - she didn’t even compliment my hair! Oh well, at least she reckons I’m pert. She may not remember any of this. Hopefully.

The most memorable bit of the night, however, was a conversation with B, one of my female workmates (not the same B as last year…whose name doesn’t even start with that letter):

B: "So Mahinda, you are married, yes?"

Me: "Er, no. Why’d you think that?"

B: "But you have a girlfriend?"

Me: "Nope. No girlfriend."

B: "Are you gay?"

Me: *choke*

Logical, I suppose - B was actually paying me a sort of compliment, in that she reckoned that I was too nice to be single. Such is my curse, unfortunately.

This sort of thing seems to happen with my workmates - a couple of Christmasses ago, I was drunkenly chatting to E, another workmate, who exclaimed loudly "Mahinda doesn’t have sex! Mahinda’s too nice to have sex!"

I’ve never let E forget the day she called me a eunuch.

Just realised that I went over the 200-post marker without even noticing. Fittingly, it was my Ashes post that did it. I’ll have to be more aware of things when I get close to 300.

• 1: 21st June 2005
  Post #1
• 50: 25th Aug 2005
  Not much really
• 100: 15th Dec 2005 - spookily, almost exactly a year ago!
  Burn Baby Burn!
• 150: 15th June 2006
  Riga - Part IV
• 200: 5th Dec 2006
  Ashes to Ashes

Actually, these are post IDs rather than actual numbers, and one or two get skipped due to network issues and the like…but I’ll be damned if I’m actually going to go through and count them!

I have slowed down since I started it all, but it’s been pretty consistent over the last year, averaging pretty much two posts a week.

Greetings, pop pickers!

This post is brought to you by the letter Q, the number 23, and my shiny new mobile phone.

For those of you who care, it’s a T-Mobile MDA III, aka HTC Artemis. Basically, it’s a PDA-style thing that does stuff. Including GPS and decent web-browsing…so expect more random posts written when I’m bored.

You lucky, lucky people.

Until recently, I’d completely forgotten about one of my old "standard meals" at uni - "proper" pasta carbonara.

I made it again on Monday night, for what seems the first time in years (and probably has been). Absolutely gorgeous. All too often, I’m guilty of "messing" too much - putting too many different herbs and spices in, and so on. Fine in a curry, but not so good in European cookery.

Anyway, as with all my cookery, it’s a bit rough-and-ready, depending on the ingredients I have to hand, but it goes something like this…

Carbonara for One*

* One Mahinda. A hungry one, at that, but that’s nothing new

1. Get boiling some pasta - spaghetti, linguine or tagliatelle works nicely. Remember to add salt and olive oil to the pan. If you’re using fresh pasta, you can leave this bit until a bit later.
2. Chop some bacon, ham or salami into little chunks.
3. In a large frying pan, heat up some olive oil. Start frying the meat, and toss in some chilli flakes.
4. If you fancy, you can add a shallot or some onion, but not too much. Maybe some mushrooms too.
5. Chop two cloves of garlic and shove them into the mix. If you fancy, some roughly chopped basil, thyme or rosemary too - I suspect that Italians would view this as some kind of heresy!
6. Check the pasta. It should be close to done.
7. Drain the pasta, which should hopefully be al dente.
8. Add pasta to pan and give it all a stir.
9. Turn off the heat and allow it all to cool a bit.
10. Add a splash of cream or milk - just a splash. This’ll help keep the egg from scrambling, and cool things down more.
11. Break open one or two eggs, directly on top of the pasta, and give it all a stir.
12. Finish off with plenty of grated parmesan and black pepper.

Of course, everyone’s got their own method for this one. I’ve made mine up over the years, adding or subtracting bits as I’ve gone along. For a while, I had pesto in there - what was I thinking?!

There’s a great discussion on it all here - including pretty much the same dish that I made. Some use a bit of wine, some pecorino cheese, some view the use of cream/milk as utterly abhorrent. But that’s exactly how things should be!

Inspired by the discussion, next time I’m going to mix the egg with some finely grated parmesan and the splash of cream/milk, rather than adding them all separately.

Bugger.

From that position, England managed to lose. Again. To Shane Warne.

No real runs from Jones or Giles. Especially Giles. Not that I’d advocate dropping anyone based on having one bad match, but there’s absolutely no valid reason for keeping the King of Spain in the side any more while Monty carries the drinks.

FACT: Paul Collingwood is the World’s Greatest Living Ginger.

Lastly, there’s been a lot of advertising from the Jamaican Tourist Board during the 2nd Test, using the tag line "We don’t like cricket…we love it". I’m not so sure they realise the full extent of that song, being as it is about a chap who, while on holiday [in Jamaica], first gets mugged and then offered some hard drugs. Nice.