The Bargain Bucket List

Being middle aged it’s about time I reviewed my life so far and established what the important things are to me. I’m not talking about loved ones or good health necessarily, although these are important, I mean that it’s about time I established what things I need to do before I shuffle off this mortal coil. 

Some people call it a bucket list, but having seen the film of the same name (which quite frankly bored me to the very pit of my stomach) I am loathe to follow suit.

However, whilst some people fill their lists with extreme sports such as white water rafting, base jumping, and sphering, I’m more likely to avoid these life-limiting activities in favour of more sedentary experiences. 

Don’t get me wrong, my mid-life crisis has set me on the path of running, of which long term readers of this blog will be sick of hearing about by now, and next year I am climbing a mountain or three over a few days whilst living on a train, but that’s another story. 

I do have foreign travel on my list; I’ve always wanted to visit the United States as it looked exciting on TV when I was growing up, and ever since my Bjork obsession of the early 1990s I’ve quite fancied a trip to Iceland. 

I’ve never fancied Australia by the way. Too many spiders. 

Every time I tell this to someone who’s been ‘down under’ I get reassurances that it’s not that bad, and then they go on to tell me how there was a giant fast moving spider in their bathroom or one hidden under a park bench or a load of tiny poisonous spiders swamping their back garden.

Anyone who has a spider story that includes them saying “the spider was so big that I heard it breathing before I saw it” is not going to convince me that a trip to the Antipodes should be high on my list. If you’re reading this in Oz then please feel free to correct me, but I bet you have a scary spider story.

It’s a shame really as I’ve always wanted to visit the big orange rock thing that you’re not meant to call Ayers Rock anymore, and also Ramsay Street. Come on, I’m British, what do you expect? 

I’ve digressed.

All I’m saying is some things on my list are, well, a little more day-to-day. A bit more achievable, if you will. So don’t laugh when I say that one of the things I wanted to do was, well, er, go to Nando’s.

Yes, I know, it’s sad and pathetic but we didn’t have one locally until quite recently and it always seemed so exciting and, well, chicken-y.

I like chicken. I don’t like chickens mind you, they’re terrible soulless creatures with unnerving beady eyes that stare right through you, but in cooked form they’re a particular favourite. Apologies to vegetarians or animal lovers there but it’s true. Chickens are the eyes of the devil and it is our duty to defeat them or we’ll all become possessed by the Dark Lord himself, and I don’t mean Simon Cowell.

Nando’s does come in for a fair bit of criticism though. This weekend I’ve heard it referred to as a “posh KFC”, which it kind of is, but I like KFC so there, and that it’s basically just chicken with the same three or four sauces added.  Well, yes, at heart it is, but that doesn’t make it a bad thing. McDonalds is essentially the same burger spruced up in a variety of buns but they don’t seem to do too badly for themselves.

What I enjoyed when I went last Saturday was that it’s good quality chicken in a variety of tasty sauces at a reasonable price and in comfortable surroundings. To be honest the company I was keeping was also very congenial which helped the overall experience but if the food had been inedible mush I wouldn’t have enjoyed it, but I did, because it wasn’t. 

Nando’s does exactly what it says on the tin and it must be popular as people were queuing for a seat as we left. To be fair I wouldn’t do that, there’s a Chimichanga two doors down and as I also like Mexican food I would have trekked down there instead, but I understand the ‘catnip’ appeal of Nando’s.

So there you go, another thing ticked off the list. So what if it’s not abseiling or quad biking or climbing up Vesuvius (all of which are on the hypothetical list), you need to have a mixture of things to make life interesting.

So what’s next? Driving a tractor? Flying a plane? Drinking absinthe? Appearing on a game show? All of these things at once? Who knows?

I’ll be sure to tell you about it though, regardless of whether you want me to or not.

Nice To See You........

I’ll be brief, I promise. Seriously I have to be. There’s only 21% left on the Sky+ planner and I really need to clear some space before the weekend as the heady mix of Formula One coverage and Saturday night reality shows may blow its circuits.

Also this is a bit of a check-in to prove I’m still alive as I haven’t been prolific of late. I could blame my job as it’s been quite busy and I’ve been travelling about a bit, although mostly to Essex. I have to say that Essex is less TOWIE and more Jeremy Kyle. Seriously, it makes Swindon look dead glamorous and sophisticated.

So I could blame that as when I get home of an evening the only thing I’m thinking about is my nice comfortable bed. I could of course blame a sudden lack of inspiration or creativity. In my student radio days there used to be a sign on the wall of the studio which read something along the lines of, ‘If you have nothing to say, play a record’.  So here’s Bananarama with ‘Love in the First Degree’…….OK, maybe not.

Well, I hadn’t felt I’d done anything of note. Then I realised that hasn’t stopped me posting before so I’ve cracked on.

Mind you we did go to London last weekend. BBC TV Centre in fact, to be in the audience of ‘Strictly Come Dancing’. I love that title, it makes no sense at all and if you think it does then you’re even more crackers than I am, and I’ve got a certificate.

It all passed off well, particularly as Lulu got voted out. I don’t know what it is about Lulu, she really gets my goat. I think it may have something to do with the fact that she is known for (at best) about four songs (‘Shout’, ‘Boom-Bang-A-Bang’, that one that was a James Bond theme and ‘To Sir with Love’ - the one with Take That doesn’t count, she was just a guest vocal) yet she insists she has some sort of long-standing career and is still releasing contemporary and relevant songs today. 

Newsflash to Lulu, you’re not, now stop squawking that intro to ‘Shout’ at every available opportunity and bugger off.

And breathe….

Yet for all the Lulus in the world there’s always my favourite person involved in Strictly…....Brucie. I am joking although I don’t have the same beef with him that the present Mrs Hayward has. For some reason he makes her skin crawl and she will merrily tell you that if she had a gun with one bullet Brucie would be at the top of her list. Not some murderer or corrupt dictator, no, she would choose to take out an octogenarian light entertainer. I had to point out to her that if he happened to expire suddenly on Saturday night, no-one would believe she didn’t have a hand in it. 

No, my favourite (as Brucie would say) is the lovely, the striking, the beautiful, Aliona Vilani. I’ve never really had a laminated list but if I had she would be on it, somewhere near the top. I should have pointed this out to Aliona on Saturday night but I fear I may have got myself ejected for my troubles, and not in a good way.

It’s not just blind lust, I also respect her as a dancer, or something.

Anyway, it was a good night and I always enjoy watching a TV show being made as I spend as much time watching the camera crew and backstage people as I do watching the show itself. I also get a big thrill out of going to TV Centre. I heard someone say once that to a kid growing up in my era, BBC TV Centre was like Hollywood. When I was in Studio 1 I thought about all the shows that had probably been made in there that I used to watch as a kid…….Morecambe and Wise, Kenny Everett, Top of the Pops, Doctor Who…..the list is long and glittering. It’s a crying shame that the BBC have been allowed to flog it as the old concrete doughnut is part of our heritage. I really must do the tour before it closes.

Aliona aside though, I was also confronted with a blast from the past as in the audience were two members of Bananarama. Yes, a second mention. They were the first band I saw when I was about 14 and I had a crush on the one who replaced Siobhan, I think she was called Jacqui. This was one of many teenage crushes. I think this one came somewhere between Wonder Woman and Calley Donington off of ‘Grange Hill’.

So this brings me round to, oh yes, here’s Bananarama with ‘Love in the First Degree’…….