Fit Dad, Fat Dad

So, it goes something like this ... each year my pub buddies and I have a 'Fat Dad Challenge' the winner of which get his Christmas curry paid for by the losers. The target is normally fitness or weight or body fat orientated but this year it is all about the six pack! Something none of us have seen outside of an off-licence for some twenty years.

No doubt it will mean weight loss, increased fitness, and reduced body fat but as it is to be judged by an independent female it's the look and firmness that will no doubt count. I predict some last minute tricks being administered such as fake tan, body shaving, and some flattering lighting. Anything that tips that final decision after all, all's fair in love and free curry!

A Year in Provence ... Part 2

So having rekindled my love affair with 'la bonne vie', what to do about it? Now I'm not naive, I know the dream often does not meet the reality. So let's start with what I did not like about my trip. 

Firstly, mosquitoes. I've always been some what of an attraction for these critters. Whilst my wife remained bite free, I was bitten to shreds and am still scratching myself raw. Secondly, the bloody cockerels waking me up at 05:30, and then virtually 'snoozing' to repeat their bird song every ten minutes. Now I think I was getting used to this as I seemed to notice it less and wake up later as the week went on. 

Finally, the sun. Yes the very thing that makes it so attractive. By 09:00 it was already on its way to 30. On such a short holiday you feel compelled to make hay, as they say, whilst the sun shines but it was far too hot some days and made for uncomfortable nights sleeping. Given more than a week I guess I would acclimatise more but at the same time would have to adopt a more European approach to the midday sun and escape it. 

From an economic point of view the pound is recovering, French property prices have been falling whilst French property taxes have been rising. In the past, UK ex-pats have often set up businesses to serve other ex-pats but with an increasing number of ex-pats returning to the UK this is hitting them. The other favourite is having holiday properties to let but there is already an abundance of these.

With all of the volatility in the EU at the moment the Euro has suffered and could further suffer if countries like Greece and Spain decline further. Ex-pat pensioners have already suffered with currency fluctuations. If the UK withdrew from the Euro zone then working and living in France would become even harder.

Divorce rates for couples who emigrate to France are high, chances of employment for non-French speaking persons are low. The French education system does not go out of its way to accommodate non-French speaking children often setting them back a year to compensate and not providing further help. Private schooling is better but only add to the cost of living.

So where does this leave my French dream? Well from a schooling point alone it puts it on hold until the kids finish school by which time I will be nearing retirement but I do not want to wait that long which brings us back to compromise. Being a home worker I can work from home, wherever that may be, as long as I have a decent internet connection. With kids being at school they have six weeks summer holiday each year. So I like the idea of letting a property for one month each year abroad. Maybe Provence one year, Tuscany another, Murcia the next, who knows.

But there remains an obstacle. Finance. My wife currently still needs to work and cannot get that much time off. So either she needs a job or business that allows her to work remotely or I need to earn enough for her not to work! Hmmmm......????

A Year in Provence ... Part I

... or at least a week in Poitou Charante but it's still time in France right? What a breathe of fresh air, quite literally, a family holiday in a rural gîte. 'Rustic' was initially the word of the week as it seemed to cover all manner of accommodation short comings but strangely as the week went on they seemed less relevant and our initial gripes were perhaps just residue of our normal life and expectations.

Like many, I long to escape the rat race and have often said that if I could live anywhere in Europe it would be about half way down France. From there you are but a days drive from Spain, Italy, Belgium, Holland, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Czech Republic, and the UK to name a few which makes it a perfect hub. A hub from which you readily gain access to beaches, lakes, rivers, snow capped mountains, or whatever other landscape takes your fancy. Furthermore, you can pick your climate. Further north for more 'English' weather, further south for more Mediterranean weather.

Waking up, an alfresco coffee and pain au chocolat for breakfast in the early morning sun and no further motivation was required for a run in the glorious and spectacular fields of sunflowers and vines. Admittedly I got a few strange looks from the local farmers (the French don't do exercise as a rule) but this did not deter me.

Upon my return a quick shower then into the swimming pool with the family for more 'exercise' under the guise of play. In fact I have come back browner, slimmer, and fitter. A break for a lunch of a baguette, fromage and jambon whilst escaping the too hot midday sun then a spot of sunbathing before plunging back into the pool to cool off. Come the evening and it's time to fire up the barbeque and start the drinks flowing. After managing to get the kids to settle in bed, some more drinking and socialising with guests from the neighbouring gîtes, and even a bit of impromptu ukulele! 

Finally, rounding the evening off lying on a blanket gazing at the truly magnificent night sky. The rural location being free from light 'pollution' the view was like someone had suddenly upgraded my usual night sky to HD, my eyes now free to see the milky way, satellites, shooting stars and constellations. This soon became part of the pre-bedtime ritual.

I wanted a holiday 'unplugged' and pretty much achieved this bar the quick email check and using an mp3 player for some tunes while chatting or catching up with some reading. The kids scraped through without iPads, pc's, DS's, or tv and thankfully since returning haven't demanded them back into their lives yet either. In fact before the holiday I couldn't get them out of the house, tonight I struggled to get them back in.

Simple pleasures indeed and I guess that's all I really desire. The French have always somehow managed to retain the appreciation of simple pleasures like food, wine, song and socialising. I liked the idea of living in France before, and I like the idea even more now.

Billy Nomates

Fed up with living in my box, an unsuccessful day at work, and my unsuccessful attempt to convince my wife by text that I was Mr Grey,  I needed to get out of the house last night. I'd told myself earlier in the day that I would go for a run. Middle age spread has been setting in a bit of late as my metabolism, that had once allowed me to scoff at dieters and exercisers, seemed to have gone into early retirement (probably about the only part of me that will ever experience early retirement) and was now just leaving an advertising hoarding for Pirelli. 


The weather was having one of it's 'special' days. It was twenty degrees, the sun was shining, the rain torrential, and the hail stones were the size of M&M's. Yes, it's British summertime at it's finest. Given all that, my motivation to run was on par with wanting to take a shower in Auschwitz. I was feeling less than inspired and started to toy with a question that has existed since time began. Exercise or pint?

There was a definite lean towards pint and I had pretty much concluded that this was the decisive action to be taken. Prepped to leave it suddenly dawned on me. It was quiz night. Bollocks! This meant the pub would be packed with over enthusiastic semi-retired/professional quiz teams who arrive early for their weekly pre-quiz treat of a meal leaving not a spare seat in the house. Furthermore once the quiz started the pub would be echoing with the voice of the quiz master booming over the tannoy. This is of course made worse by the fact the quiz master, a lad far too young to be having such a task in his social diary, falls under the spell of the microphone and starts thinking he's funny. He's not.

With this mind I sadly and slowly start to dig out my running gear and haul my ass and beer gut out of the door. Fortunately, the rain has now stopped and I start my runny, joggy, walky thing. I decide 5km will be adequate for a night I just don't want to run (which these days is most of them). It's tough and I can't quite work out whether I'm struggling mentally or physically, probably both. Every step of the way I just want to stop.

Whilst plodding on I wonder what happened to the me from last year, the me that ran 10km three times a week in under 45 minutes and that was on the days I wasn't doing weights. Yep, there was a big step between 40 and 41. I keep going knowing that if I stop I won't get started again and that having now run half the distance walking back in the rapidly cooling air was equally unattractive. Eventually I get home.

"Good run?", my wife asks.
"No!", I reply trudging up the stairs to the shower.

Standing in the shower I conclude that quiz night or not I've earned a pint. An earlier Facebook post fishing for pub company had failed and so I wandered up there on my own. On arrival I was pleased to see one bar stool left and stuck myself on it. The barmaid tried her best to be social but it was quiz night and she was busy.

So there I sat, Billy Nomates, at the bar supping at my glass. Of course I needed something to do other than gaze into mid air do I pulled out my mobile, logged on to the free wi-fi and browsed to BBC News. There you have it, I was a modern interpretation of the old guy sat in the pub reading the newspaper and you know what, it wasn't so bad. Head tucked down reading my phone everyone just left me to it and it was in many ways quite meditative. My own little bubble, mentally answering the quiz questions (which is always easier when you're not actually playing), reading the news, and supping my pint. I realise now that when you see these old men sat on their own in the pub, maybe they came there to be alone, together.

Onward Christian soldiers

My wife, like many others, has fallen for the "mommy porn" 50 Shades of Grey trilogy and like many husbands and boyfriends there have been positive side effects. For example, on her first night of reading I had been down the pub with friends. Now under normal circumstances when I creep in from the pub late, with all of the subtleness of a hippopotamus ninja,s he would always be asleep, or at least pretending to be asleep, but no not that night ;o)

But here we are once again with a sense of frustration. One friend was moaning on Facebook how despite his wife reading 50 shades he was yet to reap him any rewards. One female friend responded to the thread that "if you want your wife to act a bit more like Ana, try acting a bit more like Mr Grey". 

Now, despite already benefiting from positive side effects, this sounded like good advice coming straight from the horses mouth. So with this idea in mind I send my wife a text, nothing brash (Mr Grey is too sophisticated for that). Far from a hot lustful reply the response I get was along the lines of  "Lol, so anyway ...".

There you go, dismissed in an instant. It's all very well you ladies rattling on about what you want from us men but first you're going to have to learn to recognise it when your presented with it!

WTF! I'm Stiffler!!

Ok, so hopefully I'm not that bad but I could certainly empathise with him in American Reunion. Looking back it wasn't so much the high school years that give me the fondest memories but the ten years that followed them. I had the best friendships and the best times. It's perhaps not then strange that I was the last one to to buy a property, the last one to get married, and the last one to start a family. 

Perhaps one of the hardest things is the way friends behaviour changed towards me. One day I'm the life and soul of the party, the guy people have the best times with. Then, without me changing, they started to move on and in some ways I got left behind or became surplus to requirement. Before long I realised I was the only one at the party. Like Stiffler, deep down I didn't want the party to end but as the saying goes 'all good things come to an end'. 

Gradually as friends got married and started families I saw less and less of them. As they acquired more responsibilities they became more sensible, and rightly so. In the meantime I was living life by one of my own ethics which was 'as long as I don't have a mortgage I'm not gonna take any sh!t from anyone'. Another movie quote that strikes a chord on this note is from Horrible Bosses:

"Quick story, my grandmother came to this country with twenty dollars in her pocket. She worked hard her whole life and never took sh!t from anyone. When she died, she had turned that twenty dollars into two thousand dollars. That sucks! You know why she didn't succeed? Because she didn't take sh!t from anyone. The key to success, and they will not teach you in business school, is taking sh!t."

This is probably a good reason why at almost thirty, like Stiffler, I was still doing jobs instead of laying the foundations of a career. Something which has cost me in later life. To many extents I am still just doing jobs and lack the financial security a career offers. So do I wish I had left the party earlier? Hell no! 

However, I do wish I'd started a career whilst partying, as I now realise growing up and having 'old skool fun' need not have been mutually exclusive. The things I miss from that time in my life is the tomfoolery, the lack of any pretence, not caring what anyone thought, making fun a priority. Sometimes things are best left as fond memories because things do change. I still don't want the party to end, there just isn't a party any more. 

Gratitude List

I remember hearing someone once say how everyday when they woke up they wrote a list if all of the things that they were grateful for in their life. This is a lovely idea, too often the mid life ... re-evaluation ... focuses on what is missing from our lives without giving enough consideration as to what we already have.

Compromised or Compromise?

Uni-on [noun]

1. the act of uniting two or more things.
2. the state of being united.
3. a number of persons joined or associated together for some common purpose

Something to prove?

Ok, a bit off topic. I've often suspected that by and large what you see of people is driven more by insecurity than anything else. Of these insecurities I feel frustrated by peoples need to try and prove things to others. You can see it an so many aspects of their lives. Marketeers are of course are well aware this and successfully manipulate these insecurities to create markets (or victims of their will power).

Take for example clothing and the boom in brands to try help people pass themselves off as middle class or having some degree of income/wealth. Those with class/money don't wear labels (at least not in an emblazoned fashion). They do not need to, they are what or who they are and so do not feel the need to try and convince others of their status in life. It's only those that are not that try and convince us otherwise. Of course we do not see this just in clothing but all aspects of life where materials possessions are involved.

All possessions are but props in life. Take two people from opposite ends of the scale and strip them of all of their possessions (you're mentally picturing them naked now aren't you). In this scenario what marks one person out as being better than the other? What makes one persons love of his family better than the others? What allows you to measure one as more successful than the other? How is one persons happiness measured as being superior to the others?

I am not suggesting that possessions aren't important or have their place. Just that the choosing of them should be solely influenced by what you, whether as an individual/a couple/family, want not because of what others think of them. I wear what I wear because I like it, no other reason. My clothing is cheap but I like how it looks and feels and it means I don't get arrested for public nudity. I can afford the middle class labels but fail to see the value add. To me a t-shirt is a t-shirt regardless of the label. The sad thing is that the victims of the marketeers feel giving in to their insecurities makes them better than those who do not. Twisted huh?

Want, Need, Would like

One of my annoyances in life is hearing what people want. Not because I have a problem with what they want. I have a problem with their use of the word want. All too commonly, what they mean is 'would like' and there in lies the problem. If you 'need' something then it is a necessity. If you 'want' something then it is desired. If you 'would like' something then all you are doing is expressing a desire in a non-committal manner. 

It reminds of a story, I cannot remember the exact details but as with all good urban legends I remember the punchline. The story is of a young man who 'wants', he seeks the advice of a mentor who 'has' and the young man repeatedly keeps asking 'how'. Finally, the mentor leads him into the sea and holds the young mans head underwater. At first the young man is confused, then after a few seconds he tries to lift his head out of the water. The mentor resists and continues to hold the young mans head underwater. Getting more desperate the young tries to force his head up but to no avail. Eventually as he is running out of breath he starts to flail and lash out wildly at the mentor until eventually the mentor yields and the young man is able to come up for air. Confused and angry he asks the mentor why he was trying to drown him. The mentor replies along the lines of "only when you want something as much as you wanted to breathe just then, will you find a way and do what needs to done to achieve it'. Or something like that ...

When people tell me that they 'want' something in life I always want to ask them what they are doing about it. What is there plan? What steps are they taking towards achieving it? There is the crux of my frustration. The answer most commonly eludes to 'nothing'. What they mean is 'would like' or put another way, they'd take it if someone handed it to them on a plate. When someone 'would like' something it leans more towards desire but without the compulsion to get off one's arse and do something about it. 

Being honest about what one needs, wants and would like leads to contentment. I know that if I really needed or wanted something then I'd be doing something about it. If it's just something I would like then it's probably not all that important to me.

Because you're worth it!

Or are you????

The media constantly seem to be telling us that we deserve more. Better sex, more money, fantastic holidays, nice cars, you name it. Of course in most cases it's because they want to sell us something. Almost instinctively we answer this question 'yes' because that's what we'd all like to believe and of course the marketeers know this.

Perhaps before answering this question we should ask ourselves the question, why? Why do we deserve more? What have we done that warrants all of these things? A common term used with regard to the current generation is that of entitlement. It's is the older generations that raise this criticism because it seems they were brought up with an entirely different ethos. They were brought up under the belief that 'you reap what you sow' or put more commonly, 'you get what you deserve' which in short translates to 'you've currently got what you currently deserve and if you deserved more you'd have it'.

Of course this doesn't sit well with our ideals and maybe it's not something we want to acknowledge but in 9 out of 10 cases it's probably spot on. It seems that somewhere along the lines we've been sold a dummy. Somewhere along the lines someone started to convince us that just doing the ordinary day to day things (working hard, raising a family, etc) that our elders did just to get by suddenly entitles us to 'more' than they ever got.  Where is the justification?

When children leave home it seems that they want to walk straight into what they've just walked out of. Perhaps not a house but the 'luxuries' with in it (nice furniture, tv's, computers, games consoles, media players, etc, etc). The parents home represented the rewards of years of work and effort. How can it be conceivable that someone starting out should have anywhere near the same?

I'm not just referring to material things either. It is already acknowledged that the standard of living or quality of life has been increasing with each generation. Perhaps we should be content with this fact and if we desire more, then maybe we should get off our arses and do something to deserve it.

Problems cannot be solved by the same level of thinking that created them.

At least that's what Albert Einstein said, but what did he know.

The point is I am a product of my own decisions. Everything that I am and everything about my life is as a result of my decisions and choices in life. Ergo, if I'm not currently leading the life less ordinary that I so desire then it's down to my past decision making and I need to change my 'level of thinking' that created my current situation.

This all sounds quite severe. Could this be where some people slip into the mid-life crisis category. I mean surely change doesn't have to mean a complete revamp of one's life values? Maybe the level of thinking just needs tweaking. The point is, if I keep doing the same things I'll keep getting the same results so something's got to give.