Always Stick with your First Answer.

I recently attended a pub quiz in Whetstone, near the end of the Northern Line and beyond which the elastic that ties me to Camden and Hampstead boings uncomfortably tight. On having the answers read out at the end of the quiz we learned that lack of sleep kills you quicker than lack of food.

I had said that would be the case, but allowed myself to be dissuaded by my very good friend Graeme, who said "no way, you’d get tired and nod off before you died". It was one of those statements that is impossible to argue with at the time, despite it completely ignoring the premise of the question. The correct response would have been "yes, but if you were unable to nod off, if you were denied sleep...". My actual response was

[short silence]

"...aye, obviously."


The record for the longest scientifically verified time anyone has gone without sleep is held by a man called Randy Gardner, who absolutely positively has to be from the USA. This has prompted me to google the name "Randy Mann" of which there appear to be thousands, all in the US. No doubt Americans would redress the balance by laughing at all the people in the UK called Horny, but there aren’t any.

On Dreams and Socks

There's only one thing for it. We'll start with a description of a recent dream, and see where that takes us. I should clarify though - I tend to have what's left of other people's dreams. The ones nobody could be bothered having or that would be too confusing to tell anyone else about.

We were experiencing some sort of environmental catastrophe whereby the weather got worse and worse, and that was about it. Set in my hometown of Aberdeen (thus rendering the incredibly shit weather perfectly plausible), the lowest stratum of cloud was shooting across the sky super-fast and the wind was creating a deafeningly loud whistle, all of which looked and sounded impressive but in the context of the dream was bad news. My Dad got his hands on a rocket launcher but I don’t remember how that was going to help matters.

It was faintly disappointing to wake up and find that in fact my father hadn't tried to save the world by firing missiles at the weather.

If I could order dreams in advance, then tonight I would have a long and vivid dream the moral of which would be unavoidable - Always pay attention to what happens at the bottom of your legs if you put your socks on after you put your trousers on. Because this morning I did not pay attention and arrived at work with one trouser leg tucked into my sock.

So all the way in to work this morning I was one of those people that you see on your way in to work in the morning, and you look at them, and you think "come on mate, make an effort".

And with that, he finished his first ever blog entry.