January, 2009:

I’ve been looking at the maps for the Cumbria Way. I’m no cartographer (in fact I don’t even own a cart), but some of those contour lines look far too close together for my liking.

Damn pre-historic glaciers, making the landscape all hilly.

I’m counting on my new svelte figure getting me through (67lb lost so far and still counting). I bloody hope so anyhow because I’m doing bugger all training and May isn’t very far away at all. I nearly walked to a pub for my dinner yesterday, which would have been a round trip of about ten miles with some pretty significant hills along the way. But at the last moment I caved in and took the car instead. Well, it was raining; and anyway studies have shown that walking up hills is bad for you, especially if your name is Dan and a DVD full of Simpsons episodes has just arrived that morning from lovefilm.

There’ll be a lot less coverage of this walk on the blog than there was for the Dales Way. Primarily because I’ll not be asking for your money every three seconds this time round. There are tentative plans afoot to walk the length of Hadrians Wall for the Joseph Salmon Trust next year. But to be honest I think our enthusiasm for doing yet another walk will be largely dependent on what the weather is like when we do it this time. If it pisses it down solidly for all four days then I imagine I’ll have trouble prying anyone out of their houses ever again.

But it was sunny for the Dales walk so we’ve not done badly for participants this year. Counting myself there will be nine of us venturing out on the Cumbria Way. Eight will be battle hardened veterans of the Dales Way, and one will be a fresh faced rookie straight from the academy (my brother Sam, who as you know has a blog of his own). If my extensive consumption of poorly written action films is anything to go by, it’s pretty obvious sam is going to come to a grizzly end about two thirds of the way through the walk.

A couple of people have commented on how lucky I am to have friends willing to be cajoled to come on these walks with me. They don’t know the half of it. Away from the sanitized environment of a blog my grumpy curmudgeoness is such that it’s a miracle that anyone is willing to spend longer than half an hour in my company at all.

It helps that I’ve known most of these people for over fifteen years, and those I haven’t are firmly wedged into my friendship group with multiple ties to a number of different people. I’m a big fan of living in the area you grew up in, it gives you roots and a strong social network.

So, just for posterity, here are the mighty adventurers of the Cumbria Way (Most of these photos are stolen from Oli. Sorry Oli, but you took better photos of people than me):

Rich Bassider

Kept us all “entertained” on the Dales Way with “interesting facts” gleaned from his guidebook. Was also one of the Whernside Wu-Tang Two, and took part in a game cheating scandal that rocked the group to it’s very core. Someone remind me why we’re inviting him along again?

Rich Brook

During the Dales Way Rich fluctuated wildly between which group he walked in. One day he’d be in the slow group and the next the fast. He was like the Scarlet Pimpernel of the walking wold. Apart from he wasn’t an English aristocrat. And obviously he didn’t save any French nobles from the guillotine. And come to think of it no one was really seeking him here or seeking him there, we were more just assuming he was with the other group. But I am reliably informed he has a red cowl and cape at home, and that’s the main thing (although admittedly they are made out of rubber)

Mushy

Mushy is a Police Community Support Officer and so should be used to walking his beat. However he was one of the first to pick up an injury last year and spent most of the time limping, thereby exposing him as an unfit and workshy layabout who spends all his time nipping into Neil’s back garden for a crafty smoke rather than keeping the streets safe for ordinary citizens.

Gav

Most of us carried a walking stick on the Dales Way. Gav however took two, giving him the appearance of a Nordic cross country skier rather than a walker. It appeared to give him super speed however as along with Dave he was always powering ahead. I’m going to go one better this year and take 6 walking sticks with me. By my calculations i should therefore be able to cover the 55 miles in around four hours.

Craig

Craig was the instigator of this years walk. We’ve been talking about doing it for a while, but it was Craig that actually prodded me into getting it organized. So everyone can blame him, not me. Craig had a little side project during the Dales Way of trying to get as many photos of him pretending to drink from unsanitary water sources as possible as a way of horrifying his partner Caroline. This year I’m going to try and persuade him to eat cow pats instead.

Dave

Dave turned out to be one of the fittest amongst us last year (aside from myself obviously) consistently powering ahead without even breaking a sweat. He even went back to the Dales later in the year and re-walked the longest section just for fun. This year however I have a number of cunning plans to hobble him, including putting ants in his pants and cobras in his walking boots.

Oli

Oli had a rather unorthodox luggage policy on the Dales Walk. He carried his own stool for the entire 78 odd miles, which to my knowledge he sat on only once. Yet he didn’t take a change of t-shirts and wore the same one for six days of continual physical exertion. If we extrapolate this behavior then by next year he’ll be doing the walk naked and carrying a chest of drawers.

Sam

As my younger brother, Sam will be duty bound to take regular beatings and beratings throughout the entire trip. Something I am very much looking forward to. In fact I will be able to take all my anger and frustrations out on him, thereby leaving me an a calm and serene state to interact with my other fellow walkers. A plan with no drawbacks (Well, aside from the fact that actually Sam is quite muscly these days and might retaliate and beat me to a pulp).

The delightful Jo Beaufoix has been kind enough to ask me a few questions about my favorite topic: Me.

So without further ado – Hey ho, lets go! (I don’t think I’m ever going to get tired of that)

You’re quite funny sometimes (snort), so were you the class clown or were you a retiring type that teacher’s loved?

I was pretty shy at school and had fairly low self esteem. I’m still pretty shy these days if truth be told. It says something about my character that the majority of my friends are people I’ve known since I was 17 (The fact that we’re all still in Huddersfield probably also says something pretty damning about the paucity of our ambition).

Saying that I was pretty heavily involved in amateur dramatics throughout my schooldays, being in at least one pantomime a year between the ages of 11 and 18. So there was definitely an attention seeking gene in me somewhere.

An 11 year old Dan masters the role of Lampwick in Holmfirth’s Turn Again Theater’s 1987 production of Pinocchio (I’m the one with the slightly smaller nose)

If Amy decided to model her look and her politics on Margaret Thatcher would you have to step in or would you let her find her own way back to sanity?

It’s a tricky one isn’t it. I’ve always said I don’t approve with parents imposing their doctrine on their children, but I suppose what I really mean is that I don’t approve of parents imposing doctrine that I don’t agree with on their children.

I’d like to think that I’d be pretty liberal in attitude towards whatever direction my children choose to go in; but using Thatcher as a role model would probably be one step too far. She’d end up nicking all our milk for one thing.

If your ukelele could talk, what would it say?

That sounds like a cue for a song if ever I heard one:

Yes it is a new ukulele and no I don’t think I’ll be turning professional any time soon.

If you discovered your hamster (or insert real pet here) had an amazing talent, for example yodeling, doing Britney Spears impressions or spinning pine cones into gold would you totally exploit him or just give him a few extra carrots in acknowledgement of his talents?

Strangely enough, I’m in the process of getting my posters printed for “Dan and his Amazing Taxidermy performing Terrapin” right now. Tickets will be £5 in advance or £8.50 on the door. Make sure you come along, it promises to be a stufftastic night.

If your house was flooded by sewage, after saving your family and the talented hamster, would you then save:
a) MacBook
b) iPhone
c) Ukulele
You can only save one. Mwah ha ha haaaa.

This one is easy – none of them.

My Macbook’s screen is still smashed and is going to cost £300 to repair. We’re still in the process of negotiating with the insurance company about whether Amy bouncing on the bed and breaking it is covered in our policy; but even if they do give us the money I’m very tempted just to put the cash towards a new one rather than get it fixed. My current computer setup is just about tolerable until I can raise the funds to replace it (current estimates put that at sometime around 2031)

As for the iPhone, sorry to be a pedant but I don’t actually have an iPhone. I have an Ipod Touch, which is very similar, but without the phone bit. I was very tempted by the iPhone (and Kerry has one); but my mobile contract had about a year to run when I was thinking about one and I couldn’t justify having two contracts at the same time. Of course I could have waited for a year and then got an iPhone, but my brain isn’t wired for delayed gratification and so I bought a Touch instead.

However if the Touch got covered in sewerage then I’d have the perfect excuse to go and get myself a iPhone anyway. A plan with no drawbacks! I shall start stuffing tea-towels down the toilet immediately.

Which brings me to the uke. I feel almost treacherous in saying this, but I think I’d leave that behind too. After all the insurance would cover it.

No, what I’d really save is my external hard drive. Not only does it have all my photos and all my music on it, but it has over 480 hours worth of TV’s and movies that I have fastidiously collected by fair means and foul. If I lost that how would I watch Father Ted, or Pete and Pete, or The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes whenever I felt like it? Oh the horror, oh the humanity.

——————–

The rules say I now have to offer to interview anyone who comments here. But I’ve only just done that a couple of weeks ago (and I still haven’t sent Jeff any questions either. sorry Jeff, they are on their way I promise). I’d like to think of a way to put another spin on the interview thing, but after my emotionally gruelling ukulele performance I think I’ve exhausted all my creative genius so I’m going to put it off until next week some time.

I’ve not been doing quite as well with my Ukulele as I would have liked. My main problem is time. I’m currently working thirty hours a week, looking after Evan on Mondays and Wednesdays, taking a bulk of the responsibility for the housework, blogging, reading blogs, and also trying to spend some quality time with Kerry.

In addition I’ve got a number of side projects on the go. I’m gradually selling the unused portion of my DVD collection in order to help fund our trip to America while simultaneously pillaging lovefilm and blockbuster and ripping as many TV box sets to my iPod as possible (I’ve currently got a bit of a TJ Hooker obsession). I’m also starting to think about getting cracking on the vegetable garden.

And all this fueled only by diet coke, eggs and cous-cous.

Still I am managing to get half an hour’s practice in every couple of days or so. That’s not enough to foster any latent musical genius within me, but hopefully it will be sufficient to allow me to have a reasonable grasp of it by the end of the year.

I’ve currently got a few songs in my songbook over at Chordie:

• New England – Billy Bragg
• Accidentally in Love – Counting Crows
• Garden Song – John Denver
• Allstar – Smash Mouth
• Music In Me – High School Musical
• Island in the Sun – Wheezer
• King of the Road – The Proclamers
• Man on the Moon – REM
• New York city – They Miight Be Giants

And I am bloody awful at playing all of them. The song I am most awful at playing however is Yes by McAlmont and Butler, which is a real pain in the arse as it’s the only one that I’ve actually committed myself to perform (in honor of the hopefully imminent conception of Xbox’s child). Still, such is life.

Anyhow, other people don’t seem to be having the same uke block that I do. A couple of weeks ago Steve from Life Begins bought a ukulele of his very own. Inspired by the video of Gus and Fin that I posted the other day he decided to record his very own version of the Blitzrieg Bop with his son Oliver. And mighty fine it is too.

Of course Steve could already play the guitar, so his learning curve for the uke was probably a little shallower. Still, that doesn’t stop me being envious of his and Olivers punk rock credentials.

Hey ho, lets go!

(oh and don’t adjust your monitor, the video actually is that dark. The lights were dimmed because he shot it just before bedtime. Just the right kind of activity to gently wind down an excitable three year old for bed no doubt.)

Next Sunday I might treat you to one of my own performances. I’d plan to stay away from this blog now if I were you.

Today is international de-lurking day.

Many people prefer to stick to the shadows of a blog, seldom making their existence know to the blog’s author. They read quietly and then move on, leaving few traces other than a solitary digit on a statcounter or feedburner. They are the ninjas of the blogging world, silent, stealthy, and perhaps even a tad sneaky.

But today is different. Today is the day that all lurkers leap out into the light and loudly proclaim:

“I [insert name] am a regular reader of All That comes With It. And what’s more I believe That Dan is one of the unsung literary geniuses of our time.”

Over on his blog Rude Cactus has a hundred and fourteen comments on his de-lurking day post. I fully expect to reach the same number. If I don’t then I shall delete this blog in disgust and concentrate on my glamor modeling career.

Which brings me nicely to the second thing I wanted to mention. On Thursday I challenged all the none blog holding people who read this blog to do the self portrait meme that is floating around at the moment.

The rules of the meme are that you have take a photo of yourself as soon as you get tagged, without spending any time on making yourself presentable. Two people emailed me a photo, which to be honest was about two more than I’d been anticipating. Thank you very much Helen and Oli, you are officers and gentlemen (metaphorically speaking of course).

Here first is Oli. Notice his strong masculine jawline and broad muscular shoulders. Every pore of his body is just throbbing with male sexuality. Pwooorrr eh ladies?

And now to the delightful Helen. She is one of Kerry’s friends and therefore I shall keep my own council about her numerous qualities. I can say that she’s very nice though, and no doubt if she and Oli were to leave their respective partners (does half a melon and a tub of Vaseline count as a partner Oli?) and join forces, they would in all likelihood produce the master race.

So there you have it. A couple of fine examples of human beings. But you don’t have to send me in a photo to get my admiration and respect. All you have to do today is de-lurk. De-lurk damn you and show yourself.

Even if you don’t even lurk in the first place you can comment. Tell me your favorite joke, tell me what you had for breakfast, smash your forehead into the keyboard and type out some random gobbledygook, but just comment.

_{Please, please, I just want to be loved.}

Please.

0 comments

I was planning on leaving it another couple of weeks before posting another ukulele video, but then I came across this on youtube. What can you say to this other than: Blimey!

Armstrong and Miller’s podcast Timeghost is a strange beast. Theoretically it is them performing as their comedy characters Craig Children and Martin Baine-Jones, two pompous and puffed up cultural critics. In practice however they often break character and begin expressing their own informed and fascinating insights into various issues.

I was catching up with my listening while sorting out the laundry and became intrigued by by their discussion surrounding misery memoirs.

This loathsome genre of literature has become particularly prevalent over the last few years. Both Waterstones and Borders have entire bookcases devoted to them labeled “Painful lives” and “Real lives” respectively.

I’ve read one. The originator of the genre in fact: A Child called It. The whole thing made me feel very uncomfortable and I haven’t picked another one up since. The reason for my discomfort wasn’t my empathy with horrors the child was going through, it was the fact I was using this horrific set of circumstances as a form of entertainment.

Ostensibly these misery memoirs are inspiring works which help the reader confront and educate themselves about topics that are usually swept under the carpet by society. In reality however they are at best voyeuristic sensationalism and at worst a form of sadistic and pedophilic pornography.

And there are bloody thousands of them: Don’t ever tell, Please Daddy no, Loss of innocence, Worthless, Don’t tell Mummy, Ma he sold me for a few cigarettes. Each sporting the uniform bleached white photo of a solum looking child gazing mournfully at you from the cover.

But the misery memoir seems to have had it’s heyday. Apparently sales of the top 20 of the genre are down 30% on last year. And long may that trend continue say I.

And this is where it starts to get really interesting to me. Apparently in times of economic prosperity there is a large public appetite for gritty realism and tragedy in their entertainment. Whereas in times of difficulty comedy becomes more popular. It seems there is a need for balance in peoples lives. When reality looks bright, then people consume darkness. When things look bleak they gravitate towards the light.

Which all goes to explain why I have felt culturally disenfranchised for the past five years or so.

Just last night I was sitting in a patient’s house alongside two child protection social workers. We were waiting to get telephone confirmation about the availability of a acute psychiatric bed so that I could transport the patient and the social workers could get on with working out what was going to happen to her child. The TV in the corner was on and we were all half watching it. When an advert for the new series of celebrity big brother came on one of the social workers turned to the other and said:

“I’m addicted to that. I know it’s rubbish but when you come home from doing this all day you just want to escape don’t you”.

Exactly.

The last thing I want to do after spending eight or nine hours wallowing in human misery for a living is come home and watch ER or Eastenders or a documentary about children growing up in Brazilian slums. I don’t want my heartstrings to be tugged or my tears to be jerked. I don’t enjoy feeling sad for gods sake, I want to laugh.

I’m not comparing these forms of entertainment to the repugnant misery lit genre, they are clearly unrelated. But I have a similar inability to enjoy them all the same.

I used to worry that this made me shallow. That I was missing out on a rich cultural diet in favor of the junk food of sit-coms and panel games. I felt guilty about giving up on Battlestar Galactica half way through season three because all the characters were being unpleasant to each other. I fell into the trap of thinking heavy and serious translated to weighty and worthy; that light and funny was frothy and somehow inferior.

But i’ve come to realize that just because I don’t want to spend my free time immersing myself in tragedy and suffering doesn’t make me a lesser person. It just means I don’t have enough space in my soul to take on more sadness than I am currently dealing with. I am not as informed as I should be on topics such as the middle east conflict, Zimbabwe, and the deteriorating relationship between India and Pakistan. I rarely read the paper and generally switch over whenever the news comes on Radio 4. But I know quite a lot about the suicidal thoughts of the man I saw last week who’s wife left him; and to be honest that’s as much as I want to deal with right now.

I need to stop worrying about “improving myself” in directions that make me feel uncomfortable, and start concentrating on activities that lighten my heart.

So if you want me I’ll be over there in the corner blogging about inanities and practicing my ukulele.

I’ve been tagged by Raging Dad to do the self portrait meme. Here are the rules:

1) Take a picture of yourself right now!
2) Don’t change your clothes, don’t fix your hair… Just take a picture.
3) Post that picture with no editing.
4) Post these instruction with your picture.
5) Tag 10 people to do this.

Now usually I wouldn’t think of plastering photos of myself all over my blog. I find those self obsessed narcissists who bombard people with pictures of themselves pulling funny faces or with stupid hairstyles both crass and offensive. I like to think that All That Comes With It is a haven of elegant prose and serene reflection; not a opportunity for some grinning idiot to try and scrape up cheap laughs by gurning at the camera.

Still, I really like Raging Dad and so I thought I’d make an exception just this once.

When I got the email telling me I’d been tagged I was in the middle of making soil mold chili for dinner (What, doesn’t everyone check their email while they cook? What if you get a comment on your blog or something?). So here is a photo of me stirring the foul concoction.

I apologize for the low lighting levels, but three of the lights in the kitchen have stopped working for some reason and I lack the masculine skillset to fix them. What’s worse is the light in the bathroom has gone too, which makes midnight visits to the toilet an exercise in guesswork and skill. I’m going to have to do something about fixing them at some point as the situation really isn’t tolerable; especially as it tends to get dark about an hour after sunrise these days.

I’ve got a day off on Friday and so plan on squirting the light fittings with water and then giving them a good bashing with a copper rod that I’ve got hanging round the house. That should get them working I should think.

Anyhow I’m going to tag some people to do this meme, but being the rebel that I am I’m going to twist it slightly.

Instead of tagging people with blogs I want to see pictures of the people without blogs that are reading this. I know there are some of them out there – My parents, Kerry’s parents, Helen, Oli, Craig, Neil, my sister, Prince Charles, Stephen Hawkins, Lenny Henry, the list goes on and on.

So go on, take a photo of yourself now and then email it me (dghughes28@yahoo.co.uk). I will then post it on the blog and make appropriate complementary gushings about how devastatingly attractive you are. I promise not to photshop anyone (well, aside from Oli that is. But I’ll only alter him enough to make him fit for human consumption).

Go on, you know you want to. Internet fame beckons.