Possibly. I’m not saying it was my greatest day ever or anything like that, but compared to the usual course of events it was definitely up there as one of the best ones in recent times, which probably says a lot about my life!

Things really started moving after my return from work, and as is usually the case mid-week, I was in a hurry. I was on my way to the Kingston Leisure Centre for my last squash match of my league, and it had to be said I was feeling a bit apprehensive. My opponent was someone I had never beaten in all the times we had played previously, and I needed a win to secure promotion in the Leagues.

As we warmed up before the game the signs weren’t good – I was missing returns and felt tired and sluggish when moving around the squash court.  The first game was fairly close but my opponent was playing well and won it comfortably. I narrowly won the second game, just managing to hang in there, and after really digging deep I was able to secure the third and fourth games to win the match with almost maximum points!

As I left the Kingston Leisure Centre on my way to the pub on Tolworth Broadway I felt good but tired.  After parking the car, I could see that my mate from the Kingston Radio Station had already arrived for my second contest of the evening – it was Pool time!

Now whilst Pool is not exactly classed as a sport of Olympian standards, I think me and my mate probably take it a little too seriously, and are over competitive about it to a silly degree. He seemed in confident mood, and as it turned out rightly so – as the Pool games progressed he established a two game lead. It took a bit of time but I eventually draw level, and by closing time at the bar I managed to win by a single frame.

A fine weekly tradition!

He wasn’t too happy about this as I drove us back to Surbiton to pick up the traditional post pub kebab. Shortly after we had picked up our food, two girls entered the shop. One of them looked stunning – she was blue eyed, blonde, and seemed to have a very nice manner. All I could do at the time was to ask her about her Falafel, which she was eating whilst she was waiting for her friend to get her order. She was lovely.

I think the only way the evening could have ended better was if she gave me her phone number – I guess it is just a case of dreaming on!

The time to go back was almost upon me. It was the last day of my break. Whilst I’ve got no fundamental dislike of my job, going back to work after a month off was never going to be easy, so I was determined to make the most of my last Sunday of freedom.

Playing the blues...

That said, I wasn’t in too much of a reflective mood as I was on my way to the Chertsey Radio Station to do my weekly ‘Noughties and Nineties’ show. It was on leaving my car that I first heard it – the regular thump of the drum intermingled with the steady hiss of the lighter percussion, backed by the sounds of a saxophone and accompanying string instruments. The net result was pretty good, though the loudness made it hard to miss! There was definitely no doubt about its source – it was coming from the Chertsey Radio Station Studios.

I met my mate who had arrived a bit before me, and he said that the music had been going strong since he got there. We both found this a bit puzzling as according to the schedule a radio play was due for broadcasting. Also my show was to start in less than half an hour, and there was no indication that the full blown live Blues session going on would stop in time. When I went into the Studios my initial assessment was proved to be correct. There was indeed a live blues band playing, but the session was being recorded for a Blues show to be broadcast later on in the week. The assistant presenter asked if I could do my show from the smaller secondary studio, as there was a bit more recording to be done in the main one.

I had used the secondary studio before. The equipment there is actually better configured as the faders on the mixing desk are in a more logical order. The lack of familiarity with the kit was less of an issue than the lack of space, as my mate, who does a bit of co-presenting on the show, had just enough room to stand, using the guest microphone karaoke style. Whilst not a major problem, it did make the broadcast seem a bit surreal!

It was only afterwards, whilst enjoying a couple of post show pints back in Surbiton, that the realisation kicked in – I’d forgotten to find out the name of the band who were playing. This was a real shame as they were very good.

How did your celebrations go? Mine turned out to be a bit of a mixed bag.

I started things off with the family where we were joined by a couple of other people who came around for a bit of food and a drink, and then a few hours before the Big Ben chimes were due to ring in 2012 I headed off to join my mate and his wife in the rain soaked climbs of Worcester Park.

This annual event was back on the social calendar, but this year there was a difference – the venue was the house of one of his neighbours, who we all joined for dinner. The food was in abundance and was very good, but I didn’t manage to do it justice – the grub I had eaten earlier and the remnants of a cold took the edge off my appetite. The company was good though, and time passed quickly over a beer and several tequila shots. I made it back to New Malden at around 2am.

In terms of resolutions the only one I really made was to join a new internet dating website. At least that is fairly achievable!

Have a very happy and healthy 2012 everybody!

I think I’ve probably drank a few of those by now! I hope you’re all not too turkeyed out. For me, Christmas has been a bit of a quiet one this year, but that is by no way a criticism, as the run up too it has been pretty busy:

Xmas Chilling...

The last few days has been spent planning and recording an Eighties show for the Kingston Radio station – I basically played a few great 80′s tracks such as ‘King in a Catholic Style’ by China Crisis, ‘Kid’s in America’ by the lovely Kim Wilde, and ‘Night Boat to Cairo’ by Madness around a few scripted links. In theory, I thought this should probably sound OK, but the recording was a bit flaky when I  listened back to it. I found out later that this is due to some computer problems so I may have to do the recording again.

I have also been looking into the prospects of me being able to buy a home of my own. I went into a well known estate agents in New Malden to find out details of what I could realistically afford, and the news wasn’t as bad as I thought, though I’ll have to do a bit more saving by the sounds of it.

My squash playing has gone up on a bit of an exponential curve. At the moment I am leading the other players in the league, but I still have one more game to play. The aches in my hamstrings probably mean that the enforced yuletide break is much needed!

Tomorrow should be a relaxed affair as well, but I did sign up to do an evening Boxing day show on the Chertsey Radio Station, so hopefully I will catch a few of you then.

Take care, and I hope you all have a very healthy and happy Christmas, and when it comes to those sprouts, just say no!

Cynics say it gets earlier every year. If, like me, you work voluntarily for a certain radio station in the Kingston area, they may actually have a point – for us Christmas is celebrated in January! Before you say it, this is not woefully bad mistiming on behalf of the management. It’s just part of the tradition that is the Radio Station Christmas Meal.

Xmas meal - a social minefield?

This year I have been volunteered to help organise it, which no real problem as I’ve done this kind of thing before. Past experience has shown that the hosting of a successful Radio Station meal is a bit of a dark art, as there are many things that can go pair shaped at the first opportunity. One year, everyone found the food at a popular eatery near the Kingston Hill locale to be totally unpalatable. The news that the restaurant went out of business shortly afterwards came as no surprise!

At another meal, many years ago, I witnessed the only radio station fight – we had invited two representatives of a local commercial radio station along in an attempt to forge links with the community – it was something like that anyway. What happened was that one of them got incredibly drunk and was getting out of control – at one point he licked the bald head of an increasingly uncomfortable radio volunteer who had definitely had not signed up for this! Things came to a head (see what I did there!) when the representative’s colleague, after taking a whole evenings worth of his abuse, punched him in the face. It certainly calmed him down a bit though!

Another far less dramatic incident occurred when we all went to a remote restaurant that formed part of a hotel in Esher. Towards the end of the evening, myself and three other radio station members, all of us slightly the worse for drink, had just left the main building with a view to getting back to Kingston. A car pulled up and stopped in front of us. We all piled in grateful for the shelter from the winters chill, and waited politely to be asked where we wanted to be driven. After about five minutes the silence was starting to become uncomfortable. The driver suddenly piped up, and informed us that he wasn’t actually a mini cab, and that he didn’t have room for us and his family. We took the hint and went back to the bar to arrange a proper taxi.

That said, there have been some very good Christmas do’s, such as the one held at the function room of the Fountain pub in New Malden. Another aspect of these events is timing – December is a terrible month for trying to organise a social gathering as people are usually busy with their own yuletide preparations, which is why the mid January date has been favoured in more recent times.

Venue is another of those variables in the mix – trying to find a place which is easily accessible to all members is trickier that you’d think. At the moment I am considering the Rotunda in Kingston. This has quite a few restaurants within the complex, a couple of which do the Italian/English fare that tends to suit most people. Also, it has very good train and bus links.

At the moment I am just testing the water, trying to find out how many members would be prepared to commit to a meal. About a week ago I issued a memo asking for people to sign if they were interested. To date quite a few people have added their signature to it. These early signs are positive, and the fact that we are even thinking of organising a Christmas meal serves as another indicator that the Radio Station is turning the corner, and is coping with the difficulties that have beset us over the last eighteen months or so.

I’d wish you all a happy Halloween but it just passed me by…again! Earlier I was out in Kingston seeing a film (it was Johnny English Reborn in case you are asking) and a few of the natives were taking the ghost and ghoul theme very seriously indeed – the bars and pubs were full of those goth dressed ‘All Hallows Day’ revellers – the celebrations have certainly moved on from the days of trick and treating!

None of the above even remotely relates to what’s been happening to me for the last few months though – I’ve re-started something that I used to do a lot of in childhood. It can’t really be described as regression – it’s more a case of going ‘back to basics’ – I’m reading books again. It may not seem like much of a revelation, but up to about three months ago the only thing I could be bothered to read in the printed form was the newspaper sports sections when I had the odd five or ten minutes to spare.

tome-riffic!

This was not always the case. As a child I was a real book worm – I used to love reading.  Although I never could claim to have been much into the acclaimed literary stuff, I did read an awful lot of books. It all began with the ‘Cat in the Hat’ by Dr Seuss, and from then on the number of books I read increased exponentially. As a child I used to latch onto to certain authors and characters. I remember a series of books about the schoolboy adventures of  ‘Jennings’, who was pretty much in the mould of Richmal Cromptons ‘William’. Other childhood favourites were ‘Danny Dunn’ who was from the States, and there was the detective series ‘Agaton Sax’ created by the Scandinavian author Nils Olof Franzén. The works of Enid Blyton and Roald Dahl got a look in, and I read tomes by countless other writers such as Jules Verne, John Mortimer, Raymond Chandler, Agatha Christie – just too many to list really. I just worked my way through the fiction section of the local New Malden library.

As I got older the stuff I read got a bit more specialised. I was an avid reader of science fiction – Harry Harrison’s ‘Stainless Steel Rat’ series was a firm favourite, and yes, I was one of those guys who bought a lot of ‘Dr Who’ books. In my teens I got really into horror – to this day I have read loads of Stephen King, Richard Laymon, Shaun Hutson to name but a few. I also have a pretty extensive collection of Sven Hassel books, which are war stories of the flying guts variety, but I suppose there is no accounting for taste! This reading habit petered out in adulthood as I ended up doing other things. Work along with the development of the hectic squash playing, Kingston and Weybridge radio broadcasting type of lifestyle meant that I had precious little time to settle down with a book.

This was basically the state of play up to this August. Due to some structural changes at work I was between projects – I suddenly found myself with time on my hands. To fill the void I started reading the Millennium trilogy by Swedish author Stig Larsson that I had bought ages ago from a well known bookstore in Kingston. These provided the inspiration for the ‘Girl with the Dragon Tattoo’ series of films, and even though I have seen all the movies, the books proved to be a riveting read.

Even though I am back working full time I still try and find time to read. These days my book time is usually confined to my lunch hour. Once more, reading is back up there as part of my life.