Post Fourteen - The One With A Rubbish Subtitle Because I Am Rubbish At Thinking Subtitles Up

In post 13, I showed you Tim’s photographs of Victor, the Plastic Snowman, and I told you how we were going to e-mail a different picture to our friend Mike every week, from an anonymous e-mail address, because we are hilarious bastards.

So, every Monday at 3pm, we sent a photo of Victor the Plastic Snowman straight into Mike’s Inbox from our custom-built email address (riddlemethis3003@i’mstillnotreallygoingtopublishithere.com).

As you will no doubt have already  gathered, this was brilliant.

I pictured him sitting there every Monday afternoon, probably eating Coco Pops, staring at his laptop, and wondering why he was getting pictures sent to him of a snowman visiting Glasgow’s tourist attractions. How long would it be before it chipped away at his sanity and he started to pin each week’s photo to a wall, staring at it for hours on end, trying to work out the Case of the Plastic Snowman?

Maybe we’d Photoshop the wee bastard into famous scenes from history and convince him he was a time-travelling snowman sending photos from the past?

We were heading into summer at this point, which was great because 2010 was the year of the South African Football World Cup*, so there was a tangible excitement everywhere you went!

...Which lasted all of thirty seconds before the shrill, face melting noise of vuvuzelas drove the world mad.

(Incidentally if you’re into football – or even if you're not – check out my friend Joe’s ace blog here, and revel in the hilarity as he regales you with his quest to collect an official football top for each and every one of the 209 FIFA nations. He made the paper and everything, so clearly this is a much more worthwhile cause than trying to get a bird.)

This was also the summer that I decided to try boxing (as in the sport and not as some kind of cardboard storage device constructor, if that’s a thing). Of course, I don’t have any desire to punch people in the head, and even less desire to be punched in the head, but I’ve always been keen to try boxing because:

A)    I want to learn how to punch people in the head;

B)    I’ve been a regular gym-user for years and needed to mix it up a bit;

C)    Rocky is brilliant;

D)   My granddad is into boxing and I’d sometimes stay up late and watch it with him when I was wee.

I did a search on the interwebs and found The Griphouse, a martial arts gym that was pretty close to where I lived. Somehow managing to rope my younger brother to come with me, we went one Wednesday night, hoping to acieve all that stuff that people get when they do sports like integrity, resolve, and honour (unless you happen to be Lance Armstrong).

About all that I learned was that I couldn’t skip for shit.

Needless to say, it was fucking brutal; it was some of the most intense exercise I’ve ever done, and the day after the first class, every inch of me was aching, especially the muscles that had clearly never been used before, of which there were apparently ninety billion.

But I loved it! (After I regained feeling again, anyway.) So we kept going, even buying wraps, gloves and gumshields, and we’ve been going off and on  - much like this blog - since. (No, I still can’t skip. Or punch.)

And this is what I meant by Broadening My Horizons. And this is a photo of Lance Armstrong fleecing the public and drowning kittens in acid (possibly):

"Hey kids, if you want to achieve all your dreams and goals in life, all you have to do is lie, cheat and steal! Preferably under the influence of drugs."

                                                                    

This was also the year I started developing a story I came up with during a Creative Writing course into a novel, which makes me sound like a total dick. Maybe I’ll update this blog with the trials and tribulations of writing a novel and trying to get it published? Or maybe I won’t, since I started it 3 years ago and have only written the title.

Anyway, trying new things and concentrating on my hobbies for a few months was a nice break from the soul-crushing agony of dating thing, and allowed me to gain some perspective - which meant it was probably a good time to start dating again.

And I’ll end this post here to make sure you’re intrigued enough to come back in 3 years’ time when this gets updated again.

Thanks for tuning in!

*For those of you who don’t follow football, ask questions or know any better, Scotland defeated Spain 10-nil in the Final. I scored them all.

Photo courtesy of planetc1 @ Flickr