Thoughts on love, sex, death and everything else.

I did not buy any presents this year, although i did receive 3 unexpected ones from friends. I will buy them something in return, but not as a Christmas present, later on in the year just as a present. However I have decided to treat myself to my own present, something which I really want, a top notch electronic dictionary, thesaurus and encyclopedia plus word games all rolled into one. A friend of mine got one a few weeks ago and showed it to me when she came to visit over the festive period. I was hooked within a few minutes; you can jump around from one word to another like surfing the web, exploring the meanings of words and finding more about the world. Unlike a computer this is very portable, being able to fit into my coat pocket, so I will be able to take it with me wherever I go to be able to get an answer to any questions that pop up in my mind when I'm reading the newspaper, a book or whatever.

ps it's the Oxford Concise Dictionary, and the shortened Encyclopedia Britannica. It's also got an English usage guide, and a large store of quotes from well known people.

Hi there,

I am breaking tradition with Christmas this year in two ways:
firstly I'm having lamb for dinner on Christmas Day. Secondly I'm hopefully having a present free Christmas. In November I was walking through (funnily enough) Woolworths and saw all the toys and other stuff waiting to be sold as presents, and I had a strong feeling that I didn't want to get involved in all the hustle and bustle of deciding what to get and getting involved in all the crowds. Plus the fact I have recently had alot of stress with having my new kitchen fitted. I decided to take the unilateral decision not to buy any presents and asked my friends and family not to give me any.

I must say that I feel I made the right decision, I feel a lightness which comes with not getting involved with hastle. Perhaps next year I will feel more positive about getting presents.

The good news is that the lamb got done after about two hours. But when eating it I still found a slight pink spot. It was a shoulder of lamb and to be honest it was a waste of time because there was so much fat in it. It was on offer at Morrisons. I realise now that when Morrisons reduce something like that its because it crap rather than them wanting to give customers a bargain. Another thing i've noticed is that they reduce bent cans by about 2p. Wow, sale of the century!

I'm really wracked off at the moment, I'm cooking a lamb joint in my new electric oven (have had gas before), put it in at 180 like it said on the label, its only just over 600 grammes and so should not take much more than an hour and a quarter, it's now been in for and hour and a half and it's still not done? What's going wrong?

You might have noticed that after a period of blogging once every 3 months or so, this is my third one in as many days. You might have guessed correctly that i've got a bit more time on my hands because i'm off work with a chest infection. Thankfully today my temperature seems to have gone down a bit. During the past few days, sat in my armchair watching crappy daytime TV, it felt like there was an oven inside me, with a leg of lamb and some roast potatoes sizzling away in there. It might seem a funny thing to say, but I bought some lamb yesterday for tea tonight, and that's what made me think about my high temperature!

There have been two or three high profile cases of people who have gone to Switzerland to have assisted suicides. Every time this comes into the spotlight, there are calls from the suicide lobby to legalise the practice in some form. Whilst acknowledging that there are alot of very ill people who would wish to die to relieve their suffering, and also the suffering of their relatives, I always feel uncomfortable about the idea of it being legalised in general. I believe it is the start of a slippery slope where people could be assisted to kill themselves when they haven't explored all the alternatives. I think that each individual case should be judged on it's own merits, rather than passing some sort of general law.

For example the recent case of the Rugby player Daniel James aged 23, a gifted player who had a career in front of him, who suffered permanent paralysis from the chest downwards after his spine became collapsed in a scrum. He went to the Dignitas clinic in Switzerland to have an assisted suicide, supported by his family, because he didn't want to live a 'second class existence'. There are two things which bother me about this. Firstly his very young age; surely he had alot of time to explore options such as learning to live a meaningul life with his disability, and secondly, it was barely 18 months between the accident and him committing suicide, surely not enough time to give himself chance to come to terms with the tragic accident. Just in passing I know a friend who has been paralyzed from the chest downwards for many years; he used to be a pilot for the RAF before he had a motorbike accident which put an end to all of that. Despite his disability, and having alot of reliance on others, and sometimes being in alot of pain, he is a very confident and happy person. His way of dealing with it was that he is a buddhist and after the accident decided to become a buddhist monk, living in a buddhist community and helping the community to thrive. That is how he channeled his energy into an alternative lifestyle. Surely someone else in a similar situation such as Daniel James, whilst not having a spiritual outlet, needs to fully explore all the options. Perhaps the best solution is a big change in the mental outlook, not to rush and kill oneself.

The first link below is a news article about Daniel James, the second is a link about Dignitas.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/hereford/worcs/7675745.stm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dignitas_(euthanasia_group)

Hi there,

I watched the most recent episode of Wallander on BBC; I was a bit skeptical, thinking that it was yet another detective/cop program, so how could it add to anything that's gone before. My first impression of watching it was that it was very low key, very slow, and Wallander (Kenneth Branagh) seemed to have his mind on other things rather than his job; he seemed a little wishy washy at times and I felt like putting him in a paper bag and shaking him up a bit to get a bit of pizzaz. The thing is that we are so used to fast paced cop dramas where everything happens within half an hour. The pace did pick up a bit in the last half an hour. After that I watched a programme called 'Who is Wallander' - a documentary about the character, i wanted to get some more insight into what he was all about. Apparently Kurt Wallander (pronounced with a 'V' or a 'W', depending on who was talking in the documentary) is quite big in Sweden, he is a character created by crime author Henning Mankell, who portrays him as a normal sort of guy who has weaknesses, including getting emotionally involved in cases and being visibly scared by some of the dangerous situations he finds himself in. He is also sensitive, but with the occasional outburst of temper. That is the appeal of his character.

With this insight I decided to watch another episode late last night on BBC4; I was suprised to find that this one was in Swedish with English subtitles, and Kurt Wallander was played by another actor, Krister Henriksson. Wallander has made it big on the screen in Sweden long before the recent English adaptation. According to Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wallander_(TV_series) the character in the books likes to listen to opera in his car or at home. In the English adaptation they dropped this trait because the film makers decided that he would be too much like Inspector Morse with whom the public here are already very familiar with. I enjoyed the Swedish version more than the English one for several reasons. First is that I thought Henriksson http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0377631/ came across better in that he portrayed the essential character without being wishy washy; it seems that Kenneth Branagh has slightly over egged the pudding when it comes to acting introverted and sensitive; Secondly, although reading subtitles can be hard work as you have to keep switching your eyes to the bottom of the screen to keep up with the dialogue, I rather enjoyed listening to the Swedish voices, and it gave more realism, as it is based in Sweden after all! All in all I would recommend any Crime fiction lovers to watch this in its English or Swedish format, especially if you like lots of gruesome murders.