A Personal Update

It seems I’ve been neglecting my blogs somewhat, in my defence I’ve had a very busy few months.

I don’t often talk in too much detail about my work, I usually just moan about it or complain about, what I see as, poor decision making or lack of understanding in the companies upper management structure. I’m a low level manager heading up the estimation team, my team is the smallest in the company, normally consisting of myself, two product estimators and an estimation apprentice. The company I work for is quite fortunate in that it is part of the building industry and hasn’t really been affected by the pandemic. In all honesty the current situation has actually been beneficial to our business as it’s restricted the flow of cheaper, lower quality, alternative products, manufactured abroad, from flooding the market and has allowed us to pick up a larger market share. As product estimators this has meant my teams workload has increased, couple this with one of my estimators leaving in august, it has meant that we’ve had to pick up a lot of the extra workload. Because of my teams hard work we’ve managed to cope fairly well, though it does make our jobs very intense and often means skipping breaks and working extra time (I’m not referring to this as overtime because we don’t get paid overtime), unfortunately our success has meant that I’ve not been able to convince upper management to replace the estimator that left further intensifying my teams jobs.

What this means to me is that most nights, when I get home from work, I generally don’t have the energy to sit at my computer or laptop and write anything. It also means that I’ve not had the drive to actually try out any new recipes or think too much about reviewing anything that I’ve bought or anywhere that I’ve visited. Since my blogs are generally just my own personal thoughts, recipes or product reviews, I’ve not really written anything about anything at all.

It also means that I’ve been somewhat neglecting my diet and exercise regimes and have slipped back into some of my old habits. This has led to me putting on quite a bit of weight, has lowered my self-confidence and has led to me not feeling comfortable with sharing selfies or other images of myself.

Hopefully in the New Year I’ll be able to get in a new employee, get myself back on a more even keel, lose a little bit of the weight and find more time for myself.

I want to embrace my slightly eccentric aesthetic, be a little more wizardy (yes, wizardy is definitely a word) and learn about herbal remedies, foraging, vegetable and herb gardening and tarot reading (more because I love the artwork and the idea of interpreting a narrative than any actual belief in physic abilities or the cards power to tell the future).

Obviously I intend to write and post about my exploits, but whether I do or not remains to be seen.

I hope anyone reading this has an excellent holiday period and finds the opportunity and time to visit, or at least talk to, family and friends.

Be safe.

June 2021 - Body Image

I’m having a real body image crisis at the moment and I can’t see a way out of it.

November 2019, I was the healthiest I’ve been in my adult life, I’d dropped 8 or 9 stone in weight, was exercising most days and was fitting into a 34 inch waist jean and large t-shirt. By mid February 2020 I’d slipped back up to a 36 waist, extra large.

I’d been quite proud of my success, I didn’t want to slip further and really had to do something about it. I dropped my maximum caloric intake down from 2000 a day to 1800 and increased my workout schedule from 3 to 5 times a week, I figured I’d be back on track in 3 or 4 months.

It’s now June 2021 and I’m still in the same place I was in February 2020. 18 months of 1800 calories a day and exercising 5 days a week and I’ve lost no weight, if anything I’m looking slightly more portly than before.

I’ve tried increasing my protein by swapping out a meal for a shake, I’ve tried upping my vitamin intake with supplements, I’ve tried cutting out carbs and reducing fat, I’ve increased the amount of water I drink. I can’t decrease my caloric intake further because I lose all energy and get a pretty hefty brain fog on much lower than my current level.

I’m completely stuck, I don’t know what to do and it’s really eating away at my already virtually nonexistent self esteem. I look at myself in the mirror and see a fat tub of lard. I look worse to myself now than I did before my original weight loss. My self loathing is a constant companion.

Just A Bit Of A Rant About Employment

I’ve just received confirmation that all staff will be expected back in the office, on full working hours, from the 8th of March. I guess it’s back to 90 minute, traffic hell, commutes to and from work and skipping lunch breaks because of the extra pressure to perform that being in the office brings with it. 

Now I’ve got used to it and adjusted my body clock to account for it, losing those 3 hours from my day and my 30 minute workouts over lunch are really going to hit both my mental and physical health hard. 

So much for the pandemic permanently changing office work for the better, it seems far more likely to me that it’s going to change it for the worse.

If you don’t want to read the rantings of a perpetually working class, over opinionated, generation rent, aging millennial (yes, I am currently wearing skinny jeans… fucking zoomer.) I’d suggest you stop here… Otherwise, have at it.

I might not be a business analyst, but I’ve worked in industry for a long time and have weathered many a storm and remained relatively unscathed whilst doing so. This is thanks to being quite technically minded, trying my best to be an “information sponge”, having a reasonable level of insight into how things work and being a good judge of things to come. As I see it, thanks to business closures, caused by a mixture of the government mismanaging both the pandemic and brexit, it’s going to give the surviving employers greater scope to work their employees harder than ever. Surviving employers are going to want to take advantage of diminished competition to expand their market share and claw back lost revenue, but they’re going to want to do it without increasing costs because of the long term uncertainty that brexit has caused. 

This is likely to lead to them relying on a mixture of expendable “zero hour” contracted agency staff and expecting their existing full time work forces to increase productivity. A decrease in the amount of competition for employers generally leads to an increase in the amount of competition for employees, essentially a hell of a lot more people are now competing for a hell of a lot less jobs. Couple this with the fact that there’s now a massive influx of very talented, very experienced individuals who are currently unemployed and will be looking to start a new job ASAP and you have a situation where previously indispensable, relatively well paid, staff are now fairly easily replaced by equally capable people who are willing to accept lower pay out of desperation.

The foreseeable future is looking bleak from an employee standard point. The glass ceiling is going to be lowered, expanded and reinforced. Anyone below it will find themselves pushed into a more cramped, more competitive, higher stress environment. They will find themselves working harder and longer hours for the same or lower rates of pay. People at the lower end of the scale will find themselves suffering from stress caused by poor work/life balance, job insecurity and financial strains.

People above the glass ceiling will almost certainly experience the opposite of this, widening the gap between rich and poor. Basically because it’s been made harder for low level workers to break through, competition for high level jobs will decrease and therefore high level job security will increase. Meanwhile lower levels of business competition and an increased level of productivity to fill this void, whilst working to keep costs as low as possible though pressure on the workforce, is likely to create higher profits and therefore higher pay or bonuses to those upper echelons. 

Needless to say our current conservative government will be working hard in the background to ensure that this is the case, slowly chipping away at employee rights whilst firming up the control an employer can exert over their staff. As is generally the case with conservative policies, this will help to strengthen the stranglehold that large business concerns have over the economy, making it ever harder for smaller, independent businesses to compete on any level.

Basically if you’re already rich, and you’ve weathered the covid storm, you’re going to be doing great. If you’re poor, you’re basically screwed and as long as you continue to work, spend, repeat, whilst you’re capable at least, the government couldn’t give a damn if you sink or swim, live or die.

Ok, rant over… I’m perpetually tired and my bones hurt.

I Binged Today...

I binged today, it’s been the worst binge I’ve had in a long long time.

About 2 years ago, over the course of 10 months, I lost 8 stone (that’s 112lb or 51kg for anyone outside the UK). The last 2 years have been a real struggle to keep the weight off, a struggle that I’ve been slowly losing. As I relaxed my calorie count old habits re-emerged and I started to occasionally binge eat again. Since the peak of my weight loss I’ve managed to regain a around about a stone (14lb or 6.5kg) and I currently weigh in at almost exactly 17 stone (238lbs or 108kg).

Whilst this is nowhere near what I used to weigh, that being 25 stone (350lb or 159kg), it is by no means small and I’m still classified as clinically obese for a man of my height.

Unfortunately I’ve discovered that losing weight hasn’t really affected my ability to binge large quantities of food, nor has it really altered the maximum portion size that I’m able to eat. Today something in me briefly gave up and in the time it took me to regain control, a period of around 20 minutes, I ate 8 packets of Maltesers, 6 packets of Hula Hoops, 4 KitKats and 2 toasted crumpets. Considering this happened after I’d eaten my main meal, and having already consumed in the region of 1800 calories for the day, I should be feeling horribly bloated and generally ill. The problem is that so many years of constant binge eating has left my capacity to eat extremely high and because of that I barely even feel full. Had I not regained control of myself when I did I really don’t know when I would have stopped or how much I could have consumed.

Needless to say I’m extremely disappointed in myself and am currently feeling quite a lot of self loathing.

Happy Birthday God

Today would have been Lemmy Kilmister’s 75th birthday. He was a legend in his own life time, the only true God of rock and an important influence on me.

Music has always had a role in my life and, as a very young man, with very few friends, and almost no social skills, Motorhead were the first band that I discovered by myself.

No matter how much my musical tastes have changed, and will continue to change in the future, Motorhead have, and will continue to, always remain my all time favourite band.

Lemmy was always a big part of that, he just wanted to play rock n roll. He lived his life and played his music, he did it his way, whether it made money or not and that is something that deserves respect.

For me he seemed to embody the spirit of being your own person and, as long as you’re not hurting anyone else, doing what you want. Growing up as the weird outsider, that perceived attitude really spoke to me.

I’m not going to say that Lemmy made me the man I am today, because that’s simply not true, but he definitely affected me. The attitude I perceived him to have inspired, and continues to inspire, me and give me pause for thought. In a world where everyone, and everything, is constantly telling you how to think and feel, the ability to think to yourself “what would I do?” is an important one and I feel like Lemmy played a major role in teaching me that.

Happy Birthday!

The Midnight Rambler Rambles At Midnight

It's 1:30 in morning and I'm topping up the bath with hot water for the second time. I don't really have anything to say, but I felt like it was the right time to write something, so here I am chatting absolute shit into the void.

I do love a long, very long, soak in a hot bath, especially when I know that I have no reason to get out of bed in the morning. Candles lit, lights off, incense burning, a selection of beverages and an audiobook playing in the background, it's absolute bliss.

Today was my last day at work until the new year. With all the shit that's been going on I kind of forgot to use my holidays and if you don't use them then you lose them.

To be honest I kind of like using my days off at this time of year. Work is winding down, because of the bad weather, so I know that I won't be going back to a shit storm and it means I get a decent amount of time to enjoy the festive season at home.

I'm kind of hoping things ease up enough for me to risk visiting my parents and dropping off a few gifts for them, my siblings and my nieces. We're not a religious family, though some people I consider family lean towards the pagan side, but we all still celebrate Christmas. I know my parents will have the old family Christmas tree up in the bay window and I know that there will be a small pile of gifts sitting under it. I know my mum will still insist on cooking a huge turkey, even if it is just the two of them this year. I know that if I wanted them to they'd still set a place for me, even though it's been years since I last came home for Christmas. 

We might not see eye to eye and I don't talk to them much, I visit them even less, but I do love my parents and sometimes I even miss them. The house they live in has been the family home since I was 4 years old and that was a very long time ago. I hope it will continue to be the family home for many years to come, though I guess only time will tell.

When my previous relationship broke down I, and as much of my stuff as a car could carry, moved back in with them and, even though I no longer live there, a good chunk of my stuff is still in my old room. I know that I'll have to collect it one day, but I hope that it's by choice and not by necessity.

I kind of amass stuff, some of it potentially useful, some of it potentially collectable, some of it potentially interesting and probably most of it just tat. Because I'm never particularly sure which stuff belongs in which category I generally keep all of it, that means that I have a lot of stuff, spread over a lot of different places, and, because some of it genuinely is useful, but isn't necessarily were I need it at the time, I have quite a lot of duplicates. One day I'll get around to sorting it out and actually make use of my eBay account for a change.

I guess I'm rambling, it's now 2 in the morning, I've just finished smoking my pipe and I'm currently topping up my bath for the third time. I could probably ramble on some more, but I know most people won't read this and those that do probably got bored a while ago. I should probably sign off, finish up my drinks and make my way to bed… good night.

Dirty Old Creep

Apparently being in your mid 30’s makes you old and creepy. It really does sneak up on you, I never even noticed it happen.

To be honest I still feel like I’m mostly the same person as I was in my mid 20’s, I still have mostly the same interests, I’m still learning, I’m still evolving, my tastes are still expanding and if anything I’m actually fitter and healthier now than I was then.

The difference seems to be other people’s perceptions of me. Then, when I was hanging around in book shops, game stores, music shops, toy stores or just browsing film/comic/band merchandise, I was a harmless guy doing nerdy stuff and people largely ignored me. Now, when I’m being just as harmless and doing exactly the same thing, I’m seen as some old weirdo having a mid life crisis.

Just before all this covid malarkey kicked off, I was in a local book shop, flicking through a couple of graphic novels, and I overheard two women, that looked like they weren’t any younger than me, talking, far too loudly not to be heard, about “that big, hairy, old guy over by the comics” and how “he must be some kind of freak trying to hit on young girls”. As I was the only other person in the shop, and being a big, hairy, old guy, they were clearly talking about me. I just ignored them, made my purchase and left the store, but what they said kinda hurt and it really stuck with me. When did still having interests, and being a little childish, as an adult become a bad thing? Why does it mean that I have to have some kind of sinister motive? Can’t I just be an adult that enjoys nerdy things? And why, just because I’m a man and still enjoy those things, does it make me some kind of lecherous perve?

On the upside, being a bit older does mean that my beard is thicker and more majestic than ever, even if there is an awful lot of white hair in there.

My Covid Experience

Today is the first time, since getting a positive Covid test, that I’ve physically managed to hit 20km. It took considerably longer than it normally does and I felt absolutely horrible afterwards, but I did it.

For me being ill is never really something that crosses my mind, it happens very rarely and, most of the time, when it does happen it’s very mild and I’m over it in a day or two. When Covid hit the scene I obeyed the rules and followed all the guidelines, but not because I was worried about myself, I was doing it to protect the people in my life who are vulnerable. I’m relatively young, I’ve a very robust immune system and I’m fairly healthy. I thought that if I got it I’d either be asymptomatic or it would be extremely mild and I’d bounce back in a couple of days.

Several weeks ago someone in our office tested positive for Covid, the following day we were all sent home with our computers and remote logins. The day after that I started feeling a little rough, realised I’d lost my sense of taste and smell and booked myself a test for a Friday evening. 

It’s Monday morning, I’m burning up, I ache all over, I have absolutely no energy, I hardly have the strength to move around, I feel like I want to die and I’ve just received my positive result. 48 hours passes, it’s Wednesday and, admittedly, I’m starting to get over it, I still have no sense of taste and smell, I still ache, I still feel drained, I can’t really concentrate on anything, but I’m mostly functional. Monday morning rolls around and I’m well enough to be working from home, but I still have no sense of taste and smell, I still ache, I still feel drained and I’m still finding it a little difficult to concentrate.

It’s now a few weeks later and I’m still not 100%. My sense of taste and smell is back, but it seems extremely muted and things don’t quite taste the same. I’m physically able to exercise, but I get out of breath much easier, I’m not able to do as much and I ache afterwards. I’m finding it much easier to concentrate, but I’m easily distracted and feel like I’m catching myself just staring into space more often than usual. My general drive hasn’t really returned, though I’m not entirely sure there was all that much of it to begin with.

Covid 19 isn’t a joke, it isn’t a hoax, it is very infectious and, whilst I concede that it may well be being exaggerated, it is definitely hospitalising people, it is definitely killing people and it is definitely an absolutely horrible disease to suffer with.

Now could somebody please gently massage my shoulders, they really ache...

A Fever Dream?

Did I really witness Nigel Farage watching clear cut video evidence of Donald Trump suggesting people look into injecting disinfectant, then have him try to deny it and then call someone fake news on live television... or did I just fever dream that whole sequence? It seems so surreal that that's kind of what it feels like.

Politics makes me so angry at the moment. I had to turn off the tele and put the kettle on, if I hadn’t I felt like I might have lashed out in some stupid way.

A nice pot of tea, and 15 minutes of light exercise, and I’m feeling a lot better, so it’s off to the "home office" to get a day's work done.

August Bank Holiday Weekend

It’s been a few weeks since I posted anything on here and that’s partially due to my own laziness and partially down to being back at work after a brief period of being furloughed, I managed about a month before I was asked back into the office, and clearing the backlog that being away from the office, for even the briefest time, creates.

The weekend just past was the last bank holiday before Christmas, and the only time off I currently have between now and then, and I spent the long weekend taking in some pretty spectacular views up in the hills of deepest, darkest Shropshire.

It's been a while so it was definitely good to get out and hiking again, though I did manage to hurt my back and mildly sunburn my face.

I stayed in a lovely little shepherds hut, with a nice log burning stove, a comfy bed, a composting toilet and nothing or no-one else, other than the farm it is situated on, for miles around.

My car had a hell of a work out getting there, it's a little, low slung, 1.4 litre hatchback. It isn't really designed for steep hills and rough roads, but it managed admirably and, other than a few extra scratches, doesn't seem any worse for wear.

It's Tuesday now and I'm back at work, which is a hell of a come down, but at least I have some nice photos, and a sore face, to distract me.

The Storm

I’m currently lying on my bed, by candlelight, listening to the storm. This is the most thunder and lightning I’ve experienced in years, I’m probably misremembering, but growing up it seemed like we had thunderstorms most summers. I do love a good thunderstorm.

Now, to make me feel more human again, all the weather has to do is actually rain and lower the temperature by about 15 degrees.

This heat is killing me, my body can’t handle it, it’s also almost destroyed my garden, the sun has been so intense it’s scorched my herbs and shriveled my strawberries.

Removing The 'Shield' From The Vulnerable

In the UK we’ve been steadily releasing the lock down for a few weeks, despite our scientists advising it’s too early, to be fair it had to happen at some point and our conservative government was always going to put money above human lives. As part of the pandemic response we have a category of people referred to as ‘shielded’, these are vulnerable people, the elderly and people with underlying health conditions. As a group they’ve been locked down the longest and have had the strongest restrictions imposed on them. As of today they’re allowed out for the first time in weeks, and it really shows. I went out first thing this morning for a few essentials, the supermarket was full of very confused looking very elderly people. They were milling around like zombies, not following the social distancing rules, ignoring other people's protests and, for some insane reason, none of the staff were doing a thing about it. 

The really crazy thing is that, when they were first restricted, there was an uproar about it being unfair to those 'shielded’ people who are still capable. The fact that now we’ve eased restrictions on them and had an influx of vulnerable people not following the guidelines, either because they don’t understand them, whether that’s willful or not, or because they are just refusing to, shows exactly why it was necessary. A line had to be drawn somewhere and protecting the most vulnerable, even though our government completely failed, and is still failing, to do so, should always be a high priority. It was inevitable that people just falling to either side of that line were going to feel hard done to, but it was a necessity and, having several vulnerable people in my family who would almost certainly not have survived catching the virus, I'm glad that it happened.

Lockdown Life

I’ve been in lockdown for a full 3 weeks now, my company went into shutdown later than most, and for the first few days of which I was working from home. I work for a manufacturing company producing for the construction industry and that has been allowed to keep operating throughout the crisis, though after the first few days of lockdown most companies went into shut down of their own accord. I’ll have been on furlough for 3 weeks as of Friday evening and that essentially means I’ll have had a full 3 weeks of not working, I didn’t want to risk losing the money I am getting by continuing to work from home despite being furloughed, though I’m sure some people will have.

It took a few days to get used to it, but now I’m really enjoying not being at work, though I do wish I’d had slightly more notice to get a few things in so I could do a few of the odd jobs I’ve been lazily (partially due to lack of free time) putting off. So far in the past few weeks I’ve helped repair some fencing that came down in the most recent storms, I’ve cleared out and turned a bit of garden into a veg patch and set some seeds into pots to grow a little before being put out (we still get occasional morning frosts at this time of year), I’ve cooked a few bits and bobs that I particularly enjoy, I’ve set myself an exercise regime and dietary controls with the aim of increasing my physical fitness, I've listened to a lot of podcasts (thank you CheapShow, www.thecheapshow.co.uk, for being thoroughly entertaining) and I’ve played a few video games that I’ve been meaning to play for a while (though I still haven’t started replaying the Witcher 3). It has now gotten to the stage where I’m genuinely dreading life going back to normal, me having to put back on my mask (metaphorically speaking... I’m an antisocial, neurotic git and it takes a lot of work and fakery for me to be around people), returning to work and having to deal with the general shit show that is humanity (I’d like to hope that all this will make people more thoughtful of others, but I’m almost 100% certain it wont and that people will return to their normal cuntish selves very quickly).

As I’ve not really done anything of note, and because I’m boring as all hell so I don’t have anything interesting to say, I’ve been very inactive on the social media/blogging front recently and the current crisis we are all suffering through hasn’t really helped. I thought I should at least add some sort of narcissistic update as to how I’m doing and what my daily life currently entails and here it is.

Thank you for reading.

I Want To Permanently Self Isolate

I want to self isolate, not because I'm ill or even that worried about getting ill (to be honest I'm much more bothered by the idea of passing the illness on to someone more vulnerable than myself than actually being ill), I just don't want to be around people anymore.

I Hate Humanity

I’m getting thoroughly sick of the thoughtlessness of the human race, and I don’t exclude myself from this, as a species we are absolutely reprehensible and, if it does nothing else, the current panic buy culture just drives it home.

I went out after work on Friday to do my normal weekly shop only to find the supermarket absolutely desolated, no fresh fruit and veg, no bread, no milk, no meat, no rice, no pasta, no loo role, no soap, it was ridiculous.

I ended up going back on Saturday and it was possibly even worse, the shelves had been restocked, but it really showed just how horrible people are. There were people literally emptying the shelves faster than the unfortunate folks trying to restock could possibly keep up. People buying things in huge quantities while preventing others just getting what they needed. Blatantly ill people wandering around coughing and spluttering all over the place, making no attempt to cover their mouths.

I’m genuinely starting to hate the human race.

My Car Had Its MOT

My car had its MOT on Monday, I went into it sure it was going to fail spectacularly and was expecting a long list of expensive repairs, that I had no idea how I'd pay for. I don't have a lot of knowledge of cars and bought this one mostly on a whim, without doing any real research or checking the car over fully (not that I'd know what I was looking for if I had been more thorough).

Since buying it, and having now driven it a fair few miles, it's become apparent that the tyres are wrecked (or at least they look it to me), the brakes squeal like an army of cats simultaneously being violently skinned alive, the suspension is as rough as unexpected buggery, it sometimes makes odd clunking noises if you steer too hard in either direction and the electrics are… eccentric possibly describes it best. All of these things are checked on an MOT, all have to meet a minimum standard of condition and performance and all of these things can be very expensive to get repaired.

In an absolutely shocking plot twist… it passed and with only one advisory, the tyres will need changing in the next few months. Being obviously surprised by the pass, and still having some concerns about safety, I asked the mechanic and apparently the brakes are fine, they're not sure why they're squealing, but there's plenty of wear left in them and they're working within legal safety parameters. As for the suspension, steering and electrics, they are showing no overly obvious signs of wear, or damage, and are all working well enough not to be a safety issue.

If the mechanic is happy, and at the end of the day it's his livelihood on the line, then I'm happy... In fact I'm very happy, my car is currently safe, it's put my mind at ease somewhat and I don't have to pimp myself on a street corner to raise cash for repairs.

Is Anxiety Still Anxiety When It's Rational?

I live in a perpetual state of feeling like my entire world is about to fall apart, a constant awareness of disaster looming in the periphery of my perception… I’d love to say this malady is of my own making, that it’s all a figment of my overactive imagination, but I’m almost completely certain that I’m only very slightly exaggerating things to myself, that it is in fact simply reality.

My New (ish) Phone is Cursed!

My last phone was a first generation Moto G, I purchased it when it was a new release from phones4u. For its price point, it was well spec'd, very reliable and fairly rugged. The only reason I replaced it when I did was down to the battery, it's none removable and had come to the end of its life. Over the years I'd dropped the phone countless times, used it in very damp conditions, used it as an entertainment device and used it as a satnav when hiking and camping, nothing ever really phased it.

About 5 months ago, when the battery finally stopped holding a charge, I replaced my Moto G with the Moto G7 Power, expecting a similar level of reliability and ruggedness. My new phone is already almost completely knackered.

I'm not well paid, I understand the value of money and I like to look after what I own. The first thing I did when my new phone arrived was to install both a tempered glass screen protector and a shock resistant case, two things that served me very well on my previous model. This time around, however, it's apparently been a pointless endeavour.

As the name suggests a mobile phone is mobile and, as such, should realistically be able to withstand being used outside. I'm British, something which I'm increasingly embarrassed to admit, so when I'm outside it's inevitable that there's going to be a degree of moisture in the air. I answered a call in some fairly standard British drizzle, no real raindrops, mostly just moisture hanging in the air and just that small degree of dampness absolutely ruined the speaker. During the call the sound went from being fairly clear to heavily distorted and painfully tinny, at the time I thought this was just down to signal and didn't think too much of it until after the fact. To be honest this might not be an issue if it only affected my ringtone or the call quality, two things that I only experience occasionally, but it doesn't. My phone is an important tool in my day to day life, it's my alarm clock, my calendar, my navigation system, my word processor, my calculator, my primary source of entertainment, my main media access point and more. This essentially means that I hear sounds from the speaker dozens, potentially hundreds, of times a day, and it's causing me a real headache.

To make matters worse last weekend I dropped the phone, something I'd done to my old one hundreds of times with little to no ill effect, and, despite the protector, the screen actually shattered. To make it more annoying it's shattered underneath the screen protector, which remains fully intact.

How is it that technology and materials keep getting better, tougher and cheaper, but the things we rely on most seem to be getting worse, more fragile and more expensive? To say that I'm extremely disappointed in Motorola is an understatement.

Epicly Lucky

I’ve owned my car for about 6 weeks and in that time the battery has stopped holding a charge, the aftermarket immobiliser has failed and frequently prevents me from starting the engine, the windscreen has cracked, the brakes no longer brake and a tyre has burst. It’s always nice to see that my epic streak of good luck is continuing.

Brexit Night

It's official, the race to the bottom has now begun, my worry is that we've all underestimated just how far there is for us to fall before we hit it.

This may be me being intentionally naive, but I genuinely hope I'm wrong, that we can turn a disaster in to a success story and that Bojo the clown isn't as dishonest, or as much as a buffoon, as he appears to be.