I Once Watched Captain Picard Make A Sandwich

"What the hell are you talking about?", you are obviously thinking. "Do you break into sci-fi star's homes, and hide in their kitchen, to watch them assemble snacks?!" I fucking wish!!! The reality of this tale is slightly less crimey/stalkery and slightly more theatrey.

"Do you want to come down to London and watch Macbeth?". My cousin, Dan, speaking. Me, "Errrrmmmm....".

"Patrick Stewart is Macbeth!"

"I am fucking there!"

So it was that me, Sharon and Auntie Kath (Dan's mum) caught a train to that there London to watch Captain Picard do some Shakespeare. We met in a pub near the theatre and had a pint, then went to the performance. 

I don't read (or watch) a lot of Shakespeare, but I had read Macbeth at school. Although I didn't really get it at the time, I remember it being quite actiony and murdery. (I've done a lot of putting a Y on the end of words now. I'll stop.) To me most Shakespeare seems to be a good story, with quite inaccessible language. But the good story carries you through and you get the gist. When it is well acted, it is very entertaining. Apart from Romeo and Juliet, of course. I have tried and tried to get that. I don't. It's a shit story. A couple of kids fall in love and get married in a few days and then kill themselves, rather than just running away. Don't buy it. Don't get into it. Don't like it. Even when it's well acted I have no emotional investment whatsoever. Enough of my highbrow Shakespeare analysis, back to THE SANDWICH!

This version of Macbeth was set in the Russian Revolution and was very good. Patrick Stewart was brilliant in the lead and you couldn't take your eyes off him. Unless you were Sharon. Sharon fell asleep. She is obviously spoilt by her much better crafted Australian soaps. Patrick Stewart's most amazing moment in the play is during a big speech in the second half. The acting was great and the delivery perfect, but what mesmerised me was his prop work. Whilst speaking he gets a loaf of bread out and starts cutting it. He applies a liberal amount of butter, followed by a good dollop of mustard. I couldn't stop watching his hands. "He's actually making a sandwich!" Next came some ham and pickle. "That looks like a good sandwich." He takes a knife and cuts it. "Surely he's not going to eat it?!" He then takes the most enormous bite of the sandwich! "HE IS! HE'S EATING THE FUCKER!!!" 

It stands as the most amazing piece of theatre I have ever seen! It was 6 years ago and EVERY time I see Dan, we tell the story of "Captain Picard's Sandwich" in minute detail. Sharon (who was there) and Laura (Dan's girlfriend) can recount every word and are thoroughly SICK of the story. Me and Dan will NEVER tire of the most defining moment in Shakespearean history!

Here is a video of the film version of that glorious moment. Watch it. Savour it... Pretend it's as good as the theatre version of it.

Macbeth, and the Business of Business from Thomas Kaufman on Vimeo.

Genetic Hybrids

I recently put a tweet on The Twitter. It went like this: 

I was pretty sure no one would reply. Or if they did it would be impossible subjects to blog about. I wasn't wrong. I received a few replies (*shocked face*), but they were all of the ilk that they would be impossible to blog about. I mean, look at this one from @randomshenans.

That is never going to be possible to write a blog about. I told him as much. I then pointed out the only things you COULD say about that nonsense. He said:

Oh, I guess we were. It wasn't much. BELIEVE ME, it wasn't much, but it was a start. So here it is. A blog about the quite RIDICULOUS subject of "What would happen if you mated a horse fly with a llama?" I took the liberty of adding the question mark. It is, after all, a question. I removed the "Discuss" because that's what I'm doing.

So then, what WOULD happen if you mated a horse fly with a llama? Firstly, we have to research our subjects. 

Horse Fly

Wikipedia says, of the Horse Fly:

'Horse-fly is the most widely-used English common name for members of the family Tabanidae. Apart from the common name "horse-flies", broad categories of biting, bloodsucking Tabanidae are variously known as breeze flies,^[2] clegs or clags,deer flies, gadflies, or zimbs. In some areas of Canada, they also are known as Bull Dog Flies. In Australia some species are known as "March flies", a name that in other English-speaking countries refers to a very different Dipteran family, the non-bloodsucking Bibionidae.'

Well then; that means cock all to me! And I really can't be arsed clicking on all those words to see what they all mean. What we do need to know is how big they are and how they mate.

From my extensive (2 minutes on Google) research, it appears that the male and female Horse Fly GET IT ON, then the female lays a whole fuck load of eggs; which then hatch in to larvae. Larvae which, fucking get this, are capable of eating FROGS AND FISH!!! WTF?! They then grow into flies and the whole disgusting process starts again. Speaking of growing; they can reach up to an inch in size. That's pretty big for a fly. Probably not so much for a llama, but we will come to that when we do LLAMA SCIENCE!

Turns out they don't sting you either, like I thought they did. I thought they were like a bee or a wasp. They BITE YOUR ASS, like a mosquito or something. Like mosquitoes, they can carry and spread diseases with their bite.

Llama

Llamas are a mammal (FUCK, this doesn't sound promising), that do the whole shag then pregnancy (for ELEVEN AND A HALF MONTHS) thing. They do not gestate outside their body then. This is already sounding vastly incompatible. 

They grow up to 6ft tall and can weigh about 450lbs. That's quite a bit bigger than an inch.

I have found no mention of laying eggs or larvae in my 17 SECONDS on the Wikipedia page for Llamas.

Conclusion

What would happen if you mated a horse fly with a llama? The most probable answer is that the llama would sit on the horse fly and crush it to death. It would probably get bitten on the arse by the horse fly in the process. Horse Flies can carry a disease called Surra. This disease can be FATAL to llamas. So the llama would drop down dead too. You would have two dead subjects!

What would never happen, in a BILLION FUCKING YEARS, is that they would successfully mate and produce a llama/horse fly hybrid. No GIANT, FLYING LLAMA WITH SIX LEGS! I mean, COME ON, FOR FUCK'S SAKE! It's an insect and a mammal! You wouldn't even be able to mate a llama with a horse, let alone a fucking horse fly! And no, you wouldn't be able to mate a horse fly with a horse either, DESPITE the name!

I am quite willing to hand over my research to Walter Bishop to see if he can make any further progress, but I'm guessing he would be flogging a dead... errrr.... llama.

Una Cerveza, Por Favor

I recently went on holiday to Mexico. Is this a blog about that? No. Well, yes. Well, no. Not really. But, kind of. Put it this way; if you're expecting a "Rough Guide To Mexico" type blog, you're in the wrong place. Try someone who embraces world travel and is happy to share their insights. If you're after me talking about something random, then read on.

Recent understanding is that, when travelling from England to Mexico, you go by aeroplane. The best place to get on an aeroplane is an airport. So it was, on Thursday 13th June, I found myself, with my wife, at Manchester Airport. Whilst doing the usual things you do at an airport (the boring official things like finding your check-in desk and handing over your bag, whilst panicking that you have put too much stuff in it and will be charged; rather than having a sausage muffin that costs the price of a family car) we saw a family excitedly running around; presumably also going on holiday. The reason this family caught our attention was that they had 2 children. Now, I know you are now thinking why 2 children would catch our attention. Lots of families have 2 children. What was attention catching was that one of the children had 2 red arms. No, not sunburn. Plaster casts. Yes, he had broken both of his arms. He was in plaster up to the elbow on both, so could bend his arms. He wasn't full on zombie or aeroplane impression, but still, how annoying. It was actually Sharon that spotted him and she pointed him out. We awwed and I said I hoped they weren't going to Florida. Imagine going to Orlando and not being able to go on any of the rides or water slides because of a last minute injury. Gutting! Poor guy. The moment quickly passed and we thought little more about it. We instead busied ourselves with the financial planning involved in buying a sausage butty and a cup of tea at an airport.

Later, we got on an AEROPLANE! This was to be our home for the next 10 hours. Whilst on there, we saw a boy with 2 broken arms. Don't worry, we weren't on some sort of hospital plane from an airport for accident prone children; it was the same lad. Stands to reason that he would be on our flight. We'd originally seen him around the area we'd checked in. Poor guy. Going on a beach holiday, where the main things to do for a child will be play in the sea or in a pool, but with 2 broken arms. Again we awwed and then thought no more about it. We busied ourselves with squinting to watch poor quality A Good Day To Die Hard and Rise Of The Guardians. We tried to watch the poor quality The Last Stand, but the quality was so poor that it was impossible to actually see or hear the film, so we gave up.

Once we landed and progressed through the usual arriving at an airport stuff, the next leg of our journey involved sitting on a coach for an hour and a half whilst people were dropped off at hotels. "Oh look. There's the broken arm kid again. Poor guy." We sat back and waited for our hotel. We got there and checked in. Whilst checking in, "Is this kid following us? He's staying at our hotel too. Poor guy. This place is right on the beach and has 3 swimming pools and a kid's paddling pool. All useless to him. He'll have to sit and watch all the other kids having fun."

Again we tried to think no more about it and proceeded in trying to stay awake until at least 10pm (which would be 4am for us, after a 5am start) to try and get a hold on the jet-lag from the off. We walked on the beach; had a beer and explored the resort.

A couple of days later we were lazing by the pool watching a group of people in their 20s throw a ball about and saw the broken-arms kid family roll up. "Awwww. A day of watching his brother play in the pool. Poor guy". His brother threw himself in and started swimming about with a snorkel and mask. Poor guy. 

THEN.... something unexpected happened. Broken-arms kid's mum pulled some strange blue things out of her bag. They looked like... could then be?... YES. They were GIANT RUBBER GLOVES! They looked like they were designed entirely for this purpose. His mum wrestled them on over his plasters; whilst he impatiently wriggled and watched his brother already in the pool. When she had finally got them on him, he LAUNCHED himself into the pool. I swear it happened in slow-motion, but that may just be the romantic in me. As he jumped in, me and Sharon CHEERED!...... Then embarrassedly looked away when his family looked round. It was a beautiful moment watching him snorkel round happily. Especially when the people throwing the ball decided it would be funny to try and "get the kid with the broken arms" and 'accidentally' bounced it off his head a couple of times whilst he snorkeled. Moving.

EDIT: Here is the website for the big rubber glove thingys http://www.protectacast.com/

My Christopher Eccleston Story

Let's begin this blog by saying that I seem to struggle typing Eccleston. If, in the process of this blog, I spell it Ecclseton, Eccleton, Ecclestone or any other variations and I don't notice to correct it, please feel free to not tell me. I do know how to spell it. I just type it wrong more often than not.

The year was 2007. The month was April. The location was The Bridgewater Hall in Manchester. Our hero was me. I was 27 years old. 

I quite like going to music gigs. I used to average at least one a month. I mostly went to them with my mate Rick. I had just started seeing Sharon and was starting to go to gigs with her too. Occasionally, if no one else fancied the gig, I would go on my own. I like my own company and have no problem going to see something I want to see on my own. I have seen Paul McCartney, U2 and Eric Clapton on my own. They were all awesome. In April 2007 Sharon was in stupid, rubbish Australia. Van Morrison was playing The Bridgewater Hall in Manchester and I bought a ticket for myself. It turned out my Mum and Bill (her boyfriend) also had tickets for that gig. As it was seated I would not be with them, but I could have a drink with them before and after. Not quite such a lonesome gig after all.

I met my Mum and Bill in the bar of The Bridgewater Hall and had a beer. Then we went to find our seats. I was in the middle of the row, in the middle of the stalls. A good view; I was happy. There were 2 empty seats to my right. The lights went down and there were still 2 empty seats to my right. A couple of minutes in and someone excused himself down the row to get to one of those empty seats. I stood and let him pass. He sat down next to me and I sat down again. My brain told me something I hadn't realised, "You know him. Look at him again." I did; It was Christopher Eccleston. "Oh. That cool actor who was great in Shallow Grave; 28 Days Later and has just been Doctor Who is sat next to me." I texted my Mum and then carried on watching Van Morrison. He was, after all, the person we were all here to see. The gig finished and Van was very good. I had left Christopher Eccleston alone. He was at a gig. Plus he's just a bloke who happens to be famous; that's still just a bloke. I noticed him hold his phone up when a song came on, but apart from that thought no more about him. As the gig finished I figured I should say something. I am a fan. But I don't want to be one of those excitable fan people. As I said, he's just a bloke. So I made no mention as to who he was and asked him if he enjoyed the gig. He said he did and that Van Morrison has mellowed a lot over the years. We exchanged a couple more thoughts on the gig and then went about our day. I spotted my Mum making her way over as we shuffled out. She got to me and said, "WHERE IS HE?!" I sheepishly pointed to the man still right in front of me. My Mum tapped him on the shoulder and said, "I want to shake your hand. You were Doctor Who. My son is a fan of yours". I was a 27 year-old MAN. I had been a COOL 27 year-old MAN! In 5 seconds my mother stripped away all those years and I said, "MUUUUMM! I'd played it cool and not mentioned Doctor Who or anything! (to him) I'm very sorry." He said, "It's ok; I have a Mum too. Pleased to meet you both." He shook both our hands and then was gone into the TARDIS... errr, night.