CameraDave.co.uk

Employing my limited powers of cunning I have come up with a two step plan to stay warm this evening in the absence of central heating at home. The first part of the plan is to be somewhere else where there is heating and the second phase of the plan is insurance as in addition to my normal clothing I will be donning my Southern Comfort coat.

An additional bonus to the plan is that I will also see the NewYear in and my drinks will be being mixed for me all night by Gav, the resident barman. I say ‘resident’, as it is his house and ‘barman’, because he actually has a bar in his kitchen.

As to the materials my Southern Comfort coat is made from it’s about 40% Southern Comfort, 60% Ginger Ale and lime cordial to taste.

One of the many flaws in my cunning plans is work - I am expected there tomorrow morning at 9am, although getting there should be easy. I have a bike and work is at the bottom of the hill I will be sleeping near the top of tonight (if I sleep).

In accordance with Murphy’s Law, it being winter and our letting agency being closed over Christmas and New Year our boilers has broken down and now what was once a source of heat, is now just a source of frustration.

Over the past couple of days our boiler has been acting up and in the abscence of a manual I have played Jesus to it’s Lazurus and by pressing various buttons I have managed to reset it and cause our cental heating to come back to life.

I’ve managed it twice, but tonight the third time however is not the charm in this case  - Obviously without heating it’s cold and I happened to choose the coldest room in the house as my bedroom even with my Geordie heritage and training of sleeping rough once every couple of weeks on the platform of Trefforest train station I am feeling just a little less than warm in my room.

Luckily for me I am not my housemates who are a little more temperature sensitive than me and even more luckily for all of us here we live in Bristol, England and not Bristol, New Hampshire, where the predicted daytime highs are currently not getting above freezing and expected to be getting colder over the next few days. (I only know this as when I looked for information on Bristol weather for some reason I got a result for the wrong Bristol.)

Naturally armed with this infomation when a housemate commented on it being freezing, I pointed out how balmy it was outside relative to his piece of hyperbole. 

I am one of those people who love marmite and as a consequence in the past I have not just limited to myself to marmite sandwiches. When I was younger I recall using some incredably flawed logic resulting in adding spoonfuls of marmite to a bowl full of rice pudding.

My logic was that if both jam and Marmite are nice in sandwiches and jam is good in rice pudding, then surely I would be onto a winner with Marmite and rice pudding. I may have been sure at the time, but I soon found out how wrong I was to the amusement of my family who were watching my “experiment”.

However until today I had not given up on the idea of uniting Marmite and rice in harmony kind of like Stevie Wonder and Paul McCartney - To be fair I may not have given up, but I also haven’t given much thought on the issue either after being put off by my earlier results.

I only gave though to it today as whilst dancing down the aisles in Sainsbury’s listening to Zita Swoon I passed the various rice cakes on the shelves and something caught my eye…

Splashing out an enormous 59p for a 30g bag I thought I’d try them and see if rice and Marmite had finally been united in something delicious. I have to admit the Marmite coated rice cakes are more palatable than Marmite and rice pudding, but fankly there is still a lot of progress to be made and I wouldn’t have eaten them all to be honest except I wanted to be sure of my conclusion of their undeliciousness.

That’s pretty much what the world looked like to me today thanks to me waking up 41 minutes before I was due at work for a 7am start. 41 minutes sounds liek a lot fo time but when you consider it usually takes me 45 minutes to walk into work you begin to see my problem.

I am not normally that alert in the mornings, but that little piece of maths had my jumping up in a way not seen since Archimedes, although unlike him I was cursing myself for dozing off after turning my alarm off and not shouting “Eureka!” - I also showed slightly more self awareness than him by ensuring I was clothed before I started running* through the streets in the direction of work.

About 10 minutes later I realised I had better slow down, because everything looked rather blurry. Not being the sharpest tool in the box first thing in the morning, it took me a few more seconds to work out why everything was blurry - I’d forgotten to put my glasses on.

Even more annoyingly I despite only having 41 minutes to have breakfast, get dressed and do a 45 minute walk I almost got to work on time. I was late, but only by one minute.

*Well walking if I am honest.

Remember kids, like the old RSPCA advert (that I haven’t seen yet this Christmas) says, “Pets are for life and not just Christmas”.

I have to admit though that as a dog lover I prefer the way a T-shirt of mine suggestively puts the same message, “Dogs are for life, not just Friday night, but other animals deserve to be looked after to.

Although it wasn’t over a week ago when I snapped him on College Green in central Bristol - Must have been doing his Christmas shopping..