#oneaday Day 150: The Bupa 10K

So! I'm not dead. More to the point, I finished the whole Bupa 10K race today without even coming close to death, so I count that as a victory. I somehow even managed to cover 10K in less time than I have done in the past despite not running the whole thing. I attribute this mostly to the fact that London is quite flat, whereas the 10K distance I practiced on has a fucking great hill at roughly the 5K mark, exactly where you don't want it.

But anyway. You're doubtless wondering exactly how it all went, so let me talk you through my thought processes, starting from when the "Green wave" (the slow people) moved into position to start. These are the things I probably would have tweeted during the race were it possible to do so. (It probably was possible to do so, but I was concentrating on not dying.)

Hmm. That announcer is a bit annoying. I don't really want to take part in any "oggy oggy oggy, oy oy oy".
Still, at least he's getting the crowd excited.
I wonder if all us slowpokes leave at the same time, or if we go a letter at a time. (I was a C-green, the slowest of the slow.)
We go a letter at a time. 11am prompt start my arse.
Still, I guess at least the people who can actually run with something resembling a "pace" left at 11am.
And there go the Bs. We're next. I wonder where my friend Gracie is.
Shit, I'm not sure I can do this.
Bugger, too late to back out now, we're going.
Hey, people are cheering. It's like we're famous.
Wow, I'm running faster than other people and I don't feel like I'm overdoing it.
Double wow, I'm overtaking people.
What a glorious sunny day it is. Going to rain all over us, my arse.
The river Thames looks almost pleasant when it's sunny. So long as you don't look too closely at the water.
The Embankment is a good place to start. It's nice and flat and straight.
1km already? This is easy.
Some sort of drumming group under this bridge. I like it. Inspirational.
Could kind of do with a drink though. I drank a bottle of water before I started but my gob has gone all dry and horrible.
1km-1.5km seems to be taking an awfully long time.
Really quite thirsty now.
Glad I went to the toilet before I started, because there's a big queue for the ones at the "pit stop". Still, just like Formula One, gives me the chance to get ahead of people. (Except in Formula One they don't stop for the drivers to have a piss.)
Hm, the red runners are coming back the other way. Perhaps we turn around just up here.
The road is wet and there's tons of bottles on the floor. Maybe there's a water station ahead.
There is!
Glug.
More drummers!
A hill? They said it was flat. Time to slow down and drink this water.
It's actually quite hot. So much for bad weather.
Top of the hill. Time to start running again.
I have started identifying people by the charities they're representing, or, more specifically, the diseases or conditions their charities support. Just in front of me are the Cancer Sisters, just ahead of them is Heart Attack Girl and keeping pace with me is World Peace Girl.
That girl's not seriously thinking about sneaking into that Tesco, is she?
No, she saw people looking at her and decided against it.
Steel band? Hmm. Not bad, but drummers are better. Steel bands bring back memories of schools.
Hmm, we really don't turn around just yet. I wonder where we do.
These streets are quite twisty and have deceptive hills.
I'm keeping pace quite nicely with the Cancer Sisters.
More accurately, we keep "leapfrogging" each other. (Not literally.)
That dude in the lion outfit must be fucking boiling.
Getting a bit thirsty again.
And I wonder if I need the toilet.
I wonder where the next toilets are.
Hmm, what's that ahead? The road's all wet.
It's a squirty-water machine! I should walk through it and cool off and be all refreshed.
Jesus Christ, that water is freezing. Maybe I'll run through it instead.
Hmm, being squirted with freezing cold water has invigorated me somewhat.
Could still do with a drink though.
Reggae band! Awesome.
Oh hey, the nice people from the pub ahead have trays of plastic water glasses.
Glug.
I think we might have finally doubled back on ourselves.
Yes, there's the Embankment. No-one still coming the other way. That really would be slow.
The Embankment is a lot longer than I remember.
There's my charity people! There's a lot less of them than for other charities, but they're still clapping and cheering. Good on them.
The Embankment is still a lot longer than I remember.
Everyone around me is flagging a bit. Running a little while, then walking, then running, then walking.
I'm still not in last place.
1 km to go. The park where we started is right there. Where does the extra kilometre come from?
Oh right, up a hill to Trafalgar Square. Cool.
I can see signs. "400m to go". Yay! Time to run a bit faster.
Gasp. Maybe not time to run too much faster.
"200m to go". Run faster? Hmm… maybe…
Fuck it. Let's go. These people walking over the finish line are pansies.
"MAXIMUM SPEED." Vrooom.
Over the finish line. People are taking photographs. I wish this running vest wasn't quite so unflattering. Still, it's kept me cool, and when you're running something like this, appearances really aren't important.
Wow, that last sprint knocked the wind out of me a bit, but I don't want to collapse. Endorphin rush?
They've taken my magic timing tag off my shoelaces. Guess that really is it.
The baggage reclaim area is bloody miles away! Couldn't they have put it a bit closer to the finish line?
You are redeemed, Bupa organisers, by giving me a goody bag halfway between the finish line and the baggage reclaim area.
Wow, I can barely feel my legs. I could have probably kept running for a while, but walking is proving somewhat difficult.
Creak.
Crick.
Those girls are giving out jelly babies! Hells yeah.
Omnomnomnom.

So that was it. I made it, I didn't die, and in a time that I'm actually quite happy with: just under 90 minutes. I know that's super-slow for actual runners, but I am super-slow. By contrast, one of the pros at the front finished in 27 minutes. 27 minutes! Christ.

But anyway, the experience was a good one. I'm glad I did it, and hopefully I'll do some more in the not-too-distant future. In the meantime, I raised £210.01 for Mind, and the sponsorship page is still open. If you're impressed with my achievements and would like to reward said achievement with a donation to Mind, then you can do so right here. Huge thanks to everyone who's already donated, and to people who've offered support in the run-up (no pun intended) to today.

Now I think it's time for sleep.

#oneaday Day 149: Tomorrow I May Be Dead

Ominous title, I know. But given that I'm running a 10K tomorrow, it's entirely possible it might be true. Okay, it probably won't be true. But it's an eye-catching title if nothing else.

So yes. Let me start again. Tomorrow I am running the Bupa 10K in London in aid of Mind, a mental health charity that some friends and I decided to represent back towards the beginning of the year. So far I've raised £150.01 (thanks to Generous Sam for the extra penny) and hope that a few of you will be feeling generous in the next few hours. It'd be cool to get the total over £200 before I finish tomorrow. That'd be nice. If you'd like to sponsor me, go ahead.

I'm a little worried about the run itself, to be honest. Pacific time-friendly working hours have played havoc with the training regime I got myself into at the start of the year, and I haven't had nearly as much practice of going the whole distance as I hoped I would have by now. Still, I have done it a few times, so I know that I'm capable of it. It's just going to be a case of pacing myself and making sure that I keep pushing on regardless — the only difference will be the fact I have a magic chip on my shoe to reveal my embarrassing time to the world when I do eventually wheeze over the finish line.

But hey. If I do manage to complete it, that'll be a pretty big accomplishment. A long run and a healthy amount of money raised for charity. Not bad at all for a Bank Holiday Monday's work.

Beyond that, I couldn't say what's next. It would make sense to find something else to "aim" for, either personally, professionally, physically or all three. I'll cross that bridge when I come to it, though. For now, I just have to survive 10km of the London streets without collapsing and dying. Easier said than done, and if there's no Day 150, you'll know that I've bought it.

Positivity! Chances are, though, that I won't be dead and tomorrow evening there will be a Day 150 explaining politely that I am absolutely knackered and hope I never have to go through anything like that ever again. Or perhaps I'll be high on endorphins and writing complete nonsense. (No change there, then.)

Either way, I'm going to plug my sponsorship page again. If you have a few quid (or a lot of quid) to spare, then dig deep and chuck me and Mind some cash. Where? Right here.

#oneaday Day 147: Where Are We?

So, let's take stock of a few things. It's now over a year since my life broke, and it's still not back together again. Some days that eventual goal of getting "back on track" feels a million miles away, over a range of insurmountable obstacles and, after all that, hanging tantalisingly just out of reach over a pit of spikes with scorpions on the ends of them. (Pretty redundant, I know, but hey, I didn't design the nightmare. Oh wait, I did.)

Things are a bit better than they were this time last year, of course. I don't wake up at 5pm and want to spend the day either crying or breaking things. I still get sad, sure — who doesn't? Though some get more sad than others. And I don't feel angry — at least, not in the same way I did this time last year. I sometimes get angry at the situation I'm still in — upset, resentful, frustrated that life sometimes feels to be going nowhere and that I feel like an incompetent 12 year old rather than a 30 year old with one hell of a lot to offer the world. But then I've always had something of a sense of self-doubt and an inferiority complex. I'm not sure that's even the right description — I know I'm good at stuff. I just sometimes feel that I'm not as good at them as other people — whether it's simple, stupid things like holding a conversation, or complex, specialised things like playing the piano or writing stuff.

"Believe in yourself," is the thing to think in that situation. "You can do it. You are awesome." And it works for a while, until something comes along to kick you in the balls and set you back to square one. To be fair, said kicks in the balls haven't happened for quite some time and hopefully I've seen the last of them. But, as I say, this time last year, I found myself kicked in the balls by life, repeatedly, and it still smarts now.

"Other people have it far worse," is the thing to think in that situation. But you know what? I don't care. Other people do have it worse. But right now, I couldn't give a toss. You can be too altruistic, too much of a nice person, focus on the wellbeing of others and neglect yourself. Good things have started to happen for me, but I want more. I've put up with shit for too long. It's okay to be selfish.

So with that in mind, I strongly hope that today represents a stride forward on the road to recovery. The job interview I mentioned yesterday was an enjoyable, pleasant experience that I feel went well. I feel quietly confident that it was a positive thing that happened today, and should I find myself offered the position in question I will happily take it without a second thought, grabbing life by the horns and bending it to my will rather than feeling sorry for myself.

Because, frankly, I've had enough of crap. Crap can go take a running jump off a very tall cliff with a physically-improbable spiky rock arrangement at the bottom. Bring on the awesome.

Please.

#oneaday Day 146: Eve of Something

I have a job interview tomorrow — the first one for a while. Okay, granted, I haven't been looking for a while due to the fact that I've been enjoying the freelance work I've been doing, but the position in question (which I won't discuss for now for fear of jinxing it) is one that would be pretty much ideally suited for me, given my background, skills and indeed what I'm doing right now. As such, I'm looking forward to it.

The whole recruitment process is, a lot of the time, very artificial. I recall one time when I happened to catch a glimpse of a letter that someone had written to the place I was working at the time, asking if there were any jobs available. The language used throughout was all very flowery and took in pretty much every application cliché that there was along the way. Said applicant was "confident" and "enthusiastic" and I'm pretty sure she was "passionate" too. I'm not sure if she was a "talented generalist" (apparently that was the fashionable thing to be a little while back, I'm not sure if it still is) but she probably had plenty in the way of "transferable skills" and "relished" the "opportunity" on offer.

I mock, but I'm pretty sure everyone is guilty of it at times. But where does all that language come from? I remember sessions in English Language classes at school dealing with "formal letter writing", but that mostly focused on layout and ensuring you put the correct "Yours faithfully/sincerely" at the bottom of a letter — a practice which seems to have fallen by the wayside in the age of the email, incidentally. I don't remember classes teaching you buzzwords that you should use in job applications.

Perhaps that's where school career advice is going wrong, though. I remember the whole Careers Week thing, where you took that questionnaire and you laughed when the kids of questionable intellect got "shepherd" and "chimney sweep" suggested as potential career paths for them. But I don't remember getting any particularly useful advice out of them, barring thinking that I wanted to do something involving writing, even then. And I didn't need a Careers Week to know that — I had already pretty much figured it out.

Of course, it's not that easy, and your life follows paths that you might not have predicted along the way. Is it chance? Fate? Destiny? Or is it the result of free will and conscious decisions that you make? Either way, it's often fairly unlikely you find yourself doing exactly what you'd imagined you'd be doing straight away. You might get there in the end, but there seems to be an awful lot of "paying your dues" along the way initially — unless you're one of the very lucky ones, of course.

Well, I think I've paid my dues by now. It's time for awesome things to happen. Bring it on, tomorrow.

#oneaday Day 144: Superinjunctivitis

I'm not going to pretend to know everything about this footballer/slag business that is all over the news at the minute, and I'm not particularly concerned about said footballer's hilarious attempt to sue Twitter over supposedly breaking his precious superinjunction, because that's like someone suing a sword manufacturer because their hand got cut off by an insane nutter with a sword.

The question that this sort of thing always raises in my mind, though, is "who the bloody hell cares?" This whole situation wouldn't have come about without the public's incessant need for celebrity gossip — vapid nonsense about whatever [insert celebrity first name here so it sounds like you know them] is wearing this week, or whether [insert different celebrity first name here] is going to the shops on Tuesday or Wednesday this week.

A footballer shagged someone who wasn't his wife. Allegedly. This is not news. We all know that footballers are Neanderthal morons who should probably be fitted with chastity belts, so frequently do their dicks turn up in unauthorised places. We also know that anyone who appeared on Big Brother is probably not averse to the idea of selling their story, however vapid and pointless, to the "newspapers" in a desperate attempt to cling on to a bit of their waning fame. Even if said story is "Hey! I shagged a married man! I'm a massive slag!"

It's pissing in the wind, of course, but I really wish that the world could move on from the obsession it seems to have with every little thing that every celebrity, whatever they might be famous for, is up to. People who read Heat magazine need to wake up to the fact that they probably aren't going to ever meet, let alone be friends with whoever is this week's hotness.

You could argue it's escapism. Perhaps true — but why not read a work of fiction instead? Why the need to pry into the private lives of people? I guess it gives people who like to hide in bushes a means of being gainfully employed rather than arrested, but it still strikes me as incredibly obnoxious.

I follow a few celebrities on Twitter and make an effort to watch certain people when they come on TV. But that's it. I have no desire to snoop into their private lives and I certainly don't give a shit who they may or may not be having sex with. That's their business, whether it's an extramarital affair or not. Their life in the public eye should be limited to whatever it is they're famous for, then they should be left alone to deal with their problems in privacy, not subjected to endless flashbulbs.

Of course, I could (and should) just ignore it all. But when some twat who can't keep his pecker in his pants starts taking aim at a service I use every single day for both personal and professional reasons — as an indirect result of our culture's obsession with celebrities? Fuck that. I think I have every right to be pissed off.

So, Ryan Giggs. Kindly stop being a dick. Everyone knows where your penis has been by now, so trying to fight for your right to "privacy" actually strikes me as nothing more than attention-seeking, ironically.

#oneaday Day 143: Music Monday: Unfair Reviews Edition

It's been a while since I went through the top songs on Spotify, so I think it's about time we rectified that right now. I'm going to do it with a twist this time, though. Since it's been so long since I listened to the radio or watched any kind of TV with modern pop-type rhythm music in attendance, I'm sure there's a lot of stuff out there that I've never heard before. So I'm going to completely subjectively go off my gut instincts after no more than 30 seconds of each song. I am also going to use no more than three words to discuss each song. And I'm going to sample 23 songs, just to be completely arbitrary. What could possibly go wrong?

From the top, then — I'm using the UK Top Tracks list in Spotify for this. Here goes nothing.

The Lazy Song – Bruno Mars

Bit Jack Johnson.

Party Rock Anthem – LMFAO

Not rock. Crap.

Give Me Everything – Pitbull feat. Ne-Yo, Afrojack & Nayer

Whiny dudes. Synth.

Judas – Lady Gaga

Jude. Arse. Judah-arse-ga-ga.

Beautiful People – Chris Brown feat. Benny Benassi

Dance eJay synth.

Where Them Girls At (Feat. Nicki Minaj & Flo Rida)

Awful. Just awful.

Rolling in the Deep – Adele

Stomp. Stomp. Stomp.

On the Floor – Jennifer Lopez

90s dance nightmare.

Sweat – Snoop Dogg vs. David Guetta

Autotuned single note.

I Need A Dollar – Aloe Blacc

Band costs more.

Buzzin Remix – Explicit Version – Mann

Shut up, Fiddy.

Born This Way – Lady Gaga

Sinister opening. Cheesy.

All Of The Lights – Kanye West

Terrible video. Pretentious.

Just Can't Get Enough – Black Eyed Peas

Please stop autotuning.

The Edge of Glory – Lady Gaga

Racing game start.

Price Tag – Jessie J

Moderately catchy. Kinda.

Skinny Love – Birdy

Nice piano opening.

Make You Feel My Love (album) – Adele

Bit Norah Jonesish.

E.T. (feat. Kanye West) – Katy Perry

Babbling autotuned twat.

E.T. – Katy Perry

Infinitely superior version.

Guilt – Radio Edit – Nero

Song for club.

I Need A Doctor – Dr. Dre

Nice opening. SHOUTING.

Grenade – Bruno Mars

Deceptive title. Whiny.

There we go, then. If, for whatever reason, you want to listen to all this garbage, then feel free to load up this playlist into Spotify.

#oneaday Day 140: 21st Century Boy

It's the 21st century. If you grew up in the 20th century like I did, this means that you're officially In The Future, because saying "21st century" sounded like it was a very long way off and not, as it happened, just around the corner.

Since we're officially In The Future, I think there's more than a few pieces of technology that we should probably have mastered by now. And I'm not going to say "hoverboards" because "hoverboards" would be rubbish. I can barely stay upright on a skateboard, and certainly not on rollerskates, so why the fuck would I want to remove the wheels and stand on a sheet of plastic floating in mid-air? No. Fuck hoverboards, and sort this lot out instead:

Pay-and-display machines that don't give change or accept card payments

Seriously. We're living in a digital society where you can pay for things by swiping your phone in front of terminals and yet when you park your car you still need exact change to purchase a ticket? Balls. Fix it.

Computers that don't tell you what the problem is

"An unexpected error has occurred." As opposed to an expected error? WHAT WENT WRONG? And no, I don't want to know the hexadecimal address of the piece of memory where something went wrong because I didn't write the program. I want something in plain English. "Your graphics card is buggered," for example, or "Your hard drive is too full for this program to work effectively."

Microwaves that have a power rating somewhere in between the ratings listed on a packet of food

The microwave here is 800W. Food packaging lists cooking times for 650W, 750W and 850W. Is it too much to ask for microwave manufacturers and those who package food to co-operate a little bit?

Clocks that don't auto-adjust to British Summer Time/Daylight Saving Time/Uzbekistan Testicle Appreciation Time

Changing the clocks is an annoying rigmarole anyway, and when some of the devices in your house do it automatically and others don't, it's a pain in the arse to figure out which is which.

Tiny things that you can't find

Everything should have a phone number or GPS tracking, meaning if you lose your keys, you should be able to phone them and locate them.

Companies who will let you sign up online but require you to phone them to cancel

I'm looking at you, LoveFilm. You were deliciously easy to sign up for, yet cancelling required me to speak to some indecipherable person on a bad line and explain to them that no, I had phoned to cancel so no, I don't want to extend my service or give them my payment information. Let me cancel online. I don't want to speak to other human beings on the phone. I hate the phone.

Companies who insist that all correspondence must be done through the mail

And I'm talking about the paper mail that comes through your letterbox. In this digital world, there's no real excuse for this any more. And while we're on…

Companies who take a week to respond to an email

"We will get back to you within 7 days." Probably with the wrong answer. It takes a few seconds to Google the question I had or to ask the person sitting behind you, to type in your response and to hit Send. Even if you have other people to deal with in the queue in front of me, I doubt it takes a week.

Erm. This may have become a bit more ranty than I intended. Oh well. We're living in the future. These things should be sorted by now. So fix them, world!

#oneaday Day 138: Time Ticking Away

It should be abundantly apparent to most people by now that time is not a static thing and it moves at different rates according to what you are doing. The expression "time flies when you're having fun" is absolutely true, but so, too, is the lesser-known "time crawls when you're in a German lesson."

So, without further ado, I present Two Lists Of Things That Make Time Go Faster And Slower Respectively.

A List Of Things That Make Time Go Faster

Having fun
Spending time with people you really like or love
Playing Arkham Horror
Playing Final Fantasy
Watching an awesome TV series on DVD
Sitting on the toilet whilst armed with an iPhone, book or magazine
Reading TV Tropes
Listening to an album… a good one, obviously
Going out for a "quick walk"
Going to the cinema
Clicking your heels together three times and reciting the lyrics to "Firestarter" backwards (I may have made that one up)
Being busy
Wanting to not be busy
Having something you want to say to someone stuck in your head, but not quite being able to say it.

A List Of Things That Make Time Go Slower

Staff meetings
Staff meetings in stuffy rooms (double effect)
German lessons
German lessons in stuffy rooms (see above)
Sitting on the toilet without any reading/play material
Listening to a boring person giving a speech
Boiling some water for pasta
Cooking something awesome
Going out somewhere you don't really want to be
Hanging out with people you don't really like
Working on something really, really dull
Being on the phone to someone you really don't want to be on the phone to
Sending a text message to someone and you not being able to predict the reaction
Waiting for a phone call regarding a job interview
Watching a movie that is more than 2 hours long

There are, of course, plenty more. But it's late and I've been working all day. Why not share some of your ideas in the comments? Oh go on. It'll be fun, like social media.

#oneaday Day 137: Say My Name, Bitch

I have something of a — what — phobia? I'm not sure it's that serious, but I have something of a thing about saying people's names, for some inexplicable reason. It might be something to do with the fact that I never really liked my own name or the way my voice pronounced it when I was a kid (hence my habitual shortening of it to "Pete" everywhere in the world these days) or it might just be one of my many strange and inexplicable neuroses.

I can't even pin down why I sometimes find it difficult to say the name of the person who is standing right in front of me and who, in most cases, I know quite well. Perhaps I worry I'll mispronounce it (granted, it's kind of hard to mispronounce most of the names of people I know, though I have no idea how to say the surnames "Ohle" or "Honea" to this day and worry if I ever meet the people in question face to face I'll pick the wrong possibility and make a big tit of myself) or perhaps I just think that someone's name is somehow a window on their soul, a piece of their person that is, well, personal.

I don't mind people calling me by name, though, that's the weird thing. And I'm aware it's silly to feel odd about saying other people's names — particularly if you're calling out for someone. "Hey! You!" really doesn't cut it in a room full of people — although to be honest, I've never really been one for calling out anyway, as I generally much prefer to just go over to the person in question and speak to them, as yelling just draws attention to 1) you and 2) the person you're yelling at, who may not be grateful for the attention.

Of course, it's easy to go the other way and start calling people by their name far too much. Then it gets a bit weird, people start raising their eyebrows and wondering why you're "acting suspiciously". Saying someone's name too much is often seen as a sign of guilt, like you're trying to avoid accidentally referring to the person as someone else, like an ex, or a hilariously deformed person you saw on TV that you can't get out of your head while you look at your friend, however awful a person that makes you.

Maybe it, like so many socialisation things, is something you just need to practice a bit. It is, after all, one of the things about "growing up" — the moment when you stop calling adults "Steven's mum" or "Mrs. Stevenson" and start calling them "Geoff". (Steven's mum's parents didn't like her much.) Perhaps there's still some sort of residual hang-up in my mind about that, like so many things.

Ah well. One more to add to the list.

#oneaday Day 136: Childlike Wonderment

Everyone supposedly misses their childhood, a time of innocence and purity when you could make fart jokes without worrying about your potential audience. And sure, there are plenty of awesome things about childhood — and plenty of reasons to ensure you keep an air of immaturity handy should the occasion demand it. But there were plenty of shitty things, too. So, in the best tradition of online journalism, I present to you the Top Five Reasons Childhood was Shit/Awesome.

Shit: Enforced Sport

P.E. lessons were something of a necessary evil, but inflicting team sports on non-sporty types is just torture, particularly when said non-sporty types inevitably are the last ones to get picked for the team, leading to abject humiliation, even if it was unintentional. So fuck P.E. — I'd much rather we'd had sessions in the gym or something. Of course, our school didn't have a gym at that point, so…

Awesome: Imaginary Play with Shit Props

My primary school was out in the country, so naturally this meant we had a lot of countryside things find their way into the playground. We had The Log, which was fairly self-explanatory, and found itself carved into an interesting assault course by everyone who discovered you could scrape a stick along it and make "piggy dust". But we also had two tractor tyres, which could be stacked in various ways to make "flight simulators" of varying complexity. Which was awesome.

Shit: Inadvertent Bodily Functions

At school, you are statistically more likely to throw up in front of people, shit yourself or piss yourself than at any other time in your life, until you become an old person, when said risk starts to increase again. I think that's really all that needs to be said on the matter. Pissing, shitting or sicking yourself is never pleasant — and even worse if there are witnesses. If you piss, shit or sick yourself when you're older than a child, people assume there's something wrong and that you need help. If you piss, shit or sick yourself when you're a child, though, you'll become an object of ridicule and never recover. Even years later, you'll be Captain "Hey! Remember that time you shat yourself?".

Awesome: The Acceptability of Lunchtime Farting Contests

Depending on your place of work, this may not apply, but for the most part, competing with your peers for who can do the best fart (and, by extension, who can discover the best position into which you can manoeuvre your legs and anus to create the most cacophonic flatulence possible) is unacceptable. But at school, this sort of behaviour was perfectly normal, if normally confined to the far end of the school field.

Shit: Having to Swear in Stealth

Swearing too much is the sole preserve of the chav, but everyone knows that a well-executed expletive can be enormously entertaining. At school, swearing was enough to get you a detention (though in my experience, these days kids swear so much it's generally ignored by teachers) and at home it was enough to get you a good hiding/grounding. Now, as grown adults, you can call each other cocks with gay abandon.

Awesome: Sleepovers

You can have sleepovers when you're older, but your friends tend to have their own house, and sleeping in their bedroom is generally frowned upon. But back in childhood and even into teenagerdom, sleepovers were a big deal. My favourite sleepover came after one of our exam results days, when my friend Woody "invented" the phenomenon of Emperor Farts, which simply involves quoting one of the Emperor's lines from Star Wars, then farting. It's funnier if you see it actually happening.

Shit: Subculture Segregation

Okay, this still happens when you're older, but it's particularly pronounced in school. Geeks don't talk to the cool kids. Cool kids don't talk to musicians, who are a different kind of cool, unless they're in the orchestra, in which case they're kind of a geek. Goths don't talk to anyone. Chavs talk to everyone but usually to start a fight. And everyone stays in their own little clique. Grow up a bit and you'll find yourself blending with a much more diverse band of people, particularly if you work somewhere like an Apple Store.

Awesome: Kids' TV

Kids' TV in the 80s and 90s was, as the rose-tinted spectacles will have it, awesome. A lot of it, to its credit, is still funny today, and entertaining for kids and adults alike. Contrast with the bullshit on kids' TV today… and you end up sounding like an old man. But hey.

Shit: Constraints

As a kid, you had to be home by a certain time, eating at a certain time, in bed by a certain time. As a grownup you can generally do what the fuck you please, so long as you either haven't made dinner plans with a hot date, or don't mind pissing off your hot date.

Awesome: Simple Pleasures

As a kid, you can find entertainment and enjoyment in the simplest things. Parents get a new car? Get taken out for a ride in it! Found a box of old clothes? Play dress-up! Got some Lego? Make something awesome without the first thing that enters your mind being a three-dimensional blocky phallus! The possibilities are endless, and you don't even need money for most things.

So basically, being a kid was pretty awesome and shit at the same time, just like being an adult. The key, then, is to find a way to balance out the awesome and shit parts of both.

So, who's up for a lunchtime farting competition?