Tommy 2.0

...and all you got was this lousy blog post! Count yourselves lucky. Where to start? Well firstly, this has been the best World Cup in living memory. To put that into context, I started remembering World Cup's around 1998. On the horizon are some massive  semis , the hardest of which is probably Brazil's. Given how far each team has 'cum' though, they'll all be looking at their respective ' drawers ' with a big grin etched across their faces. That's enough rubbish cock innuendos for one day! I spent two weeks in  Ceará , the self-proclaimed ' County Durham of Brazil '. It's nickname concerns the geographical location rather than any regional dialect. To be fair, I understood more of what was being said here than the last time I visited the birthplace of modern English mustard in the North East of England. I even learnt a new phrase,  escovar os dentes . No idea why people kept shouting it at me though. Upon my voyage I was accompanied...

...hence my absence from the blogosphere. My tale begins last month, or April as it's more commonly known. I was in front of the TV, in the midst of a lovely bacon sandwich, when Sunday Politics hot-shot Andrew Neil announced my name in reference to the Labour Party (who I'd never heard of). On swallowing my crust I immediately thought to myself...why? Sure, upcoming elections had been in the news but had I missed the memo? Was I involved? Was I unwittingly being ushered into the murky underworld of politics against my will, like so many of the buffoons on the news? Or had I completely misread the situation again, as per one or two of my previous blog posts? Naturally I assumed it was the former. My first port of call was to Google myself to see if this would shed any light. Attention was immediately drawn to a Wikipedia page who's name bore resemblance to my own. The title simply read ' Tom Greatrex '. I hadn't warranted a page before so what had c...

...which is insensitive of him to say the least. Free lifts to work are completely out of the window for next few weeks, and whilst he struggles through a simple out patient procedure, I've got to get up 45 minutes earlier to catch the bus. That's 5 whole snoozes on a standard alarm clock. Talking of work, there's been some exciting developments in the past month. I'm now 99% certain that it's Audi who employ me and not Aldi , although the fact both are German still leaves me with that indistinguishable nagging doubt.  Secondly, as of next week, ' Tommy the weird temp ' becomes ' Tommy the permanent ' in a new role. It's a radical shake-up, the likes of which haven't been seen on these shores since March 19th 2014. I am of course referring here to Cliff D'Arcy's use of the term 'biggest shake-up' in a headline about  budgets and pensions . It might just be me, but since my meteoric rise through the ranks of the ...

...without too much kerfuffle, certainly not enough to warrant a whole blog post. Losing an hour is always disappointing, but had it not been for this intro I'd have forgotten about it by now. It's a far cry from 2013, when the clocks went back. Saturday 26th October was the date and I was in the midst of my tri-annual visit to my parents' house. The 3 of us were sat watching Strictly Come Dancing  when all of a sudden somebody muttered the words that would change the course of my visit indefinitely. "Remember the clocks go back tonight, and seeing as we're flying to Croatia in the early hours you'll have to take care of it!" I assumed straight away they were talking to me. I hadn't arranged to go on holiday and it was the kind of trick they'd pulled before. Looking back, I remember 2 distinct things: I'd have to make my own arrangements for Sunday's breakfast, and... In a ' worse for wear ' state, having raided my parents ...

...was the strange demand I thought I heard today, as I walked past a rabble of hoodlums on my way to the Co-op to buy a pre-packaged sandwich for work tomorrow. "OK" I replied nervously, without really considering if I either wanted to or had the time. What followed was a more aggressive "Do another fucking blog post!", from a knife-wielding member of the group. It was at this point I realised I had my headphones in and couldn't make out what they'd actually been saying. I quickened my pace, in fear I'd misread the situation completely and they were high and wanted to sexually abuse me. Given that my blog only has 4 followers it is likely they were talking about something else entirely, but the thought of doing another post had been implanted and as I walked a different route home it was all I could think about. I recalled foolishly mentioning in my my last post that I'd review Potdog , the bunless hotdog, and also create my very own alternati...

...is Tommy Greatrex then, really? In one way or another I've been asking myself this question all my life, yet still I find myself nowhere near an answer. If, for some reason, you've read either of my first two blog posts* you're probably just as confused as I am. Based on what I've been told at various times in my life, by different people who may or may not have liked me, I sometimes vaguely  look a bit like ' ginger ' and ' not so ginger ' celebrities. Out of all this hearsay I've created a sliding scale that I like to call  The sliding scale of Tommy Greatrex-ness. See Exhibit 1A. Originally existing solely in my mind, the sliding scale allows me to plot my physical appearance and current state of mind twofold: 1) How ginger I feel in myself (flowing from left to right)  2) How stressed I feel with life (flowing from the outside in) To save any confusion, as it can be a bit of a mindbender , the scale can be seen in a physi...

...wasn't all that difficult to write, truth be told. Whether or not it makes sense, or can pass the 'Why the hell have I just read that?' test, is another matter. It's the story of a man (me) who was forced to play uncle to two little girls (my nieces) by their mother (my sister) and her father (also my father). The backdrop for this story is the city of Coventry , and the names of those two little girls? Gareth and Rosalita (pictured).* Gareth, named after the brilliant legal mind  Gareth Peirce , herself a  woman , is somewhere between the ages of 2 1/2 and 3, whilst Rosalita, named after a singer maybe, can be aged somewhere between 0 and 1. My dad and I were simply there on a weekly visit, helping out where we could. The day passed without any major incident which I, and probably only I, put down to myself. We spent the morning at the park before having lunch at Coffee Tots . On returning home we attempted to play Elefun Snackin' Safari: The Silly ...