I’ve wanted a yucca plant for about 20 years but for some reason never got around to buying one. My mother used to drag my brother and I around garden centres when we were kids and I’d often imagine I was in a jungle exploring and hiding from tigers. I’d particularly like hiding behind the giant yuccas with their thick trunks and tropical looking leaves as they provided excellent cover from marauding predatory 200KG cats and younger brothers. Whenever I’d walk past a yucca in a garden centre, DIY store or supermarket, I’d make a mental note that I must get one one of these days.

Well, after two decades that day has finally come. I noticed a few of my colleagues had plants on their desks and that mine looked a little shabby by comparison (well a lot shabby really). Aside from the football trophies (there are 3) on my desk it was all paper, books and post-it notes. I thought a plant would brighten up the place no end and since I was coming up on having been at my current job for 2 years (which is about as long as I’ve ever been in the same job) I decided I’d finally get a plant - the first I’ve had at any desk I’ve ever sat at.

So a trip out to a garden centre in Gargrave (not far from where I live) and I was returned to my childhood surrounded by clumps of bamboo, various bushes and trees along with a hell of a lot of plants. Of course without my childhood wonder and imagination it was less a jungle and more a plain old garden centre. Luckily they had loads of yucca plants in various sizes so I bought the one pictured and am now doing my best to keep the thing alive! (I’m not particularly green-fingered so it’ll be a first). Luckily I hear they’re used to desert conditions so my forgetting to water it for weeks should work out nicely.

Like most people of my age I grew up with terrorism on my doorstep. “The Troubles” in Northern Ireland started long before I was born and while I won’t go into the history now it was something I never thought I’d see the end of.

Since my father was in the army at the time (the Territorial Army thankfully), he’d tell me about people he knew murdered at the hands of the IRA and I’d feel anger and fear. I’d hear about bombings, knee-cappings and the terrible things humans can do to other humans in the name of ideology. The hunger strikers in the Maze prison sacrificing their lives for what they believed in. British soldiers under such incredible stress that events like Bloody Sunday happened.

The problem was that both sides firmly believed they were in the right and nobody was ever going to back down. The hard line of the British Government back in the 80’s - who believed they were neutral in the conflict and were simply trying to maintain law and order in Northern Ireland and protect the people’s right to democratic self-determination - just served to bolster the IRA’s views. And likewise the actions of the IRA (and other republican movements) - who saw the British army as the enemy, colluding with the state forces and loyalist paramilitaries (it later turned out they were absolutely correct about the collusion) - such as the Brighton Bombing just polarised the British Government further.

The thing is, I could understand both points of view. If a foreign army was occupying my country, walking the streets of my town arresting people that I knew, beating them and intimidating my family I’m damn sure I’d stand up and fight them. But likewise, as a Briton we had to do something about the sectarian violence on people who considered themselves British - you couldn’t just turn a blind eye.

In short it was a horrible situation and I could never see peace because there was never going to be a solution that satisfied everybody. And it was clear that no amount of military might or firepower could quell a sustained guerrilla campaign of terrorism. The Russians couldn’t do it in Afghanistan and the British couldn’t do it in Northern Ireland.

And yet here we are, Ian Paisley and Gerry Adams (whose voice used to not be allowed on BBC TV so an actor had to do voice-overs if you can believe it) sitting side by side declaring peace. How did that happen?

Well it wasn’t by “bombing them back to the stone-age”, it wasn’t by sending in more troops. It was by bringing the troops home. By letting terrorists go free from prison. By politics and diplomacy. I can’t imagine how hard it must be for the families of the thousands of people who lost their lives over The Troubles seeing murderers walking the streets. But the reality is that if you want to have lasting peace this is a sacrifice that people have to make.

I can’t imagine the peace after the first and second world wars would have been easy to take for those who lost loved ones, but it was a price that had to be paid because the alternative is much worse. And that was the case here. It’s easy to look back in the history books, see when the second world war ended and imagine that someone flicked a switch and life went back to normal. What you don’t see written about is how people got over their bitterness (most didn’t, they just had to bury it and carry on with their lives). The difference for me and people of this time is we’ve lived through it and can see how hard it was and the tremendous loss of life. Generations from now when the Troubles are summarised in history books peace will have seemed inevitable and quick in coming and a picture like the one above will no doubt be in the chapter headed “Lasting Peace Declared” or something similar.

But we should never forget how hard peace is to come by, and how precious it is. It saddens me greatly to see the same mistakes being made by the Americans in Iraq. My definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again expecting a different outcome. I guess that’s the insanity of war.

I’ve never been on holiday to Ireland and it’s a place I’ve deliberately avoided on principle for many years. I think it’s about time I booked a trip over soon. And I never thought I’d say that.

I just got a new mobile phone and since I was switching from Nokia (interesting spelling suggestion right) to Motorola and I couldn’t get the import tool to import my list of contacts I had to painstakingly go through all my numbers one by one and copy them to their new home.

It was a strange and in many ways sad experience. I’ve known a lot of people over the last 10 years or so of mobile phone ownership. Quite a few I’m still in regular contact with but a surprising number of them I’ve not spoken to in over 2 years. A few even longer. And there were a couple who I couldn’t even remember at all.

It’s sad because if you’ve made it into my contacts list then it means you mattered to me when I added you. I only save the numbers of people I want to call again. To see the name of former close friends and wonder what they’re doing now means I didn’t keep in touch like I wanted to. To see the name of someone I can’t even remember feels like a failure. And no, before you suggest it I’m not going to call them!

You see time’s short and life’s short. You can’t keep in contact with everybody. Your life and their lives move on and you can only look back with fondness at the time you shared. There’s no sense looking back with regrets. But if it’s all the same I’m a sentimental old fool so I’ll keep all the numbers. Even if I never dial them again, at least they’re there as a memento of times past.

I met up with some ex-colleagues on Friday night. I met them when I started my first job in Leeds for a company who shall remain nameless and I remember the time fondly. Not for the work, because that sucked. My timing was out as when I joined them there wasn't really anything relevant to my skill-set for me to do (they were a sort of consultancy / body shop / pimping operation) and I was young and cocky so I was a tad pissed off to be sitting around reading rather than working with shiny new technology.

However all was not lost. You see we had table football.

As soon as the clock struck 12 we'd surround the table and the banter would begin. At times I could barely stand up for laughing such was the quick wit of some of the guys. Even when not playing it was hilarious to watch two protagonists trying to win the game, and if not the game then putting off the other one. Oh, and of course fighting like crazy to avoid the shame of a 10-0 hammering.

There was the power player, the skillful one, the show-boater, the people's champion (who's always the moral victor), the shoot-on-site one and of course the lucky one (I hate lucky people!). They all know who they are! I was never much good at it but it was a lot of fun and better than writing another tedious white-paper nobody was ever going to read. It certainly served to get rid of some of the frustration of the job!

So we met up for the first time in quite a while as I said (we've all kept in touch but just don't together often enough) and it was a real laugh. Even though 4 years have passed we were right back there discussing the finer points of goading an opponent to lose at table football and such like!

There are some people you meet and for a time you're really close, have a great time and are best friends. But when that time passes and you only meet up now and then, it's never quite the same again as the shared experiences are in the past. Fortunately with these guys it's like no time has elapsed at all and we picked up from where we left off. I guess that's my definition of true friendship. You don't need to work together or spend a lot of time together, but when you do things are just back the way they were.

And you know, I'm sure I dished out a 10-0 hammering one time to Nige… I just bet he's blanked the trauma of that out of his mind - but I never will! ;-) 

I remember ABBA. Judith Wilson used to live along the road from us when I was a kid and when I was over at hers one day when she brought out an ABBA record. I’d never heard of them at that point and don’t really remember if she played the record or just looked at it (come on, it was 20 years ago!). But they clearly didn’t make an impression as I never made a point of listening to them again.

Sure, they were on the TV loads over the years, at discos, weddings, films and so on - it’s impossible to escape from them even now. I just didn’t pay much attention. So last year when I was doing some redecorating I picked up the ABBA Gold CD from my girlfriend’s collection (it was closest to hand), put it on and was hooked. I never realised what a great band they were! And even more surprising was that I already knew all the words and could sing along immediately. I instantly understood why someone once wrote a PhD on the music of ABBA (I saw a program on the BBC about it years ago).

I’ve been working hard on the next version of John’s Background Switcher (which is in beta, contact me if you want to join in the testing) and fired up Media Player. I wasn’t sure what to listen to so just picked the first on the list - which was 2 Unlimited. Since that was terrible, I chose the next which was of course ABBA - and once again I’m reminded how good they are! Excellent coding music borne out by some of the work I’ve spent the weekend doing - including the much requested anti-pants filter. One of my colleagues was doing a PowerPoint presentation and my background switcher had decided to select a photo of a pair of pants on a moor as his wallpaper, much to his embarrassment! So as of the next version you can put in a list of tags and no photos containing any of those tags will be chosen - so no more photos of random children on your desktop!

Now, if I could just get ABBA to reform and record some new material - I know all their songs already…

When I was a kid my mother would always try and catch my dad out on April Fool’s day. She’d wake him up with some piece of surprising news and generally catch him off guard so he’d quite often fall for it. In an ironic twist my brother would also try and catch my mother out - with a pretty high degree of success too!

Trouble is, when truly bizarre things would happen we’d think she was joking. One time she came in and said that a herd of cows was in the garden and we thought she was up to her old tricks but it turned out that a herd of cows really was chewing up our garden! They’d escaped from a nearby field - what are the chances?!

I had a bit of a sleep in this time since I was knackered and was woken up by my girlfriend bursting in at about 10.30 to tell me that one of her friends just texted her say she’d just won £100,000 in premium bonds. The way she spelled it out: “one… hundred… thousand… pounds!” made me realise she believed it, but my brain immediately started looking for reasons it wasn’t true and then it occurred to me it was April the 1st. I told her and the smile dropped a bit as she realised she’d been had, then started laughing. She had already replied to congratulate her friend!

When you lose someone close to you it’s the little things you miss. Sometimes you don’t think about it at all, and then a day like April Fool’s Day comes along and a load of happy memories come flooding back. If I recall correctly my mother actually fell for the BBC’s Spaghetti Trees joke of 1957 so she wasn’t entirely immune to it herself!

As I’m the wrong side of 30 nowadays Christmas for me is all about family and having some time off from work. Christmas (at least the present-opening side of things) is for kids in my book. I say that, but come Christmas morning I’m not exactly unhappy to receive a selection of interesting presents! The following are some of the highlights…

The Broons Annual (it’s a comic book)

The Broons are a working class family stuck in the 1950s who get up to all sorts of amusing and somewhat innocent adventures. They have 7 children, live in a tenement block, the mother does all the work and the father mostly goes down the pub or out fishing. It’s all written in Scottish so they say things like “JINGS! THERE’S NAE NEED TAE EAT SAE FAST YE DAFT GOWK!” and “MICHTY ME! THERE’S A MANNIE AT THE WINDAE! CALL THE POLIS!”. Every other year a new Broons annual is released and I’d eagerly read mine throughout Christmas day when I was a kid and it’d keep me busy. (Every other year they release Oor Wullie but I’ll save that for next year). My brother got it for me this year after a gap of many years so it’s like a trip back to my childhood! What’s strange is that it hasn’t changed at all, they’re still stuck in the 1950s, although the internet does pop up from time to time so they do have some of the modern trappings! Although my girlfriend can’t understand it as she disnae speak Scottish. I’m black affronted.

Some Tasty Snacks That Didn’t Last Long

I love flapjacks and anything that in any way, shape or form resembles flapjacks. I also like shortbread. And caramel shortbread, and tiffins and anything like any of the above. So when I got a box full of delicious bite-sized snacks it didn’t take me more than a few hours to devour the lot. They were lovely though!

Some Things To Make Me Smell Nice And Age Well

A collection of fine-smelling products like deodorant, shampoo and conditioner (what with the long hair) is fine, but now I’m getting older I notice I got some anti-wrinkle cream (I guess my good lady’s trying to tell me I’m not 21 any more). I’ll start to worry when I get presents including ralgex, foot powder and worse of all, Just-For-Men hair dye!

Coffee To Make You Smile

Regular readers will know I love my coffee and I also love my coffee machine. So I was very thoughtfully given some swanky coffee cups and some equipment to enable me to produce a more professional cappuccino like in the picture. Cool! What’s even cooler is that the smiley face remained all the way down until the cup was finished - just like a good pint of Guinness!

Alias is like James Bond (played by a very attractive woman - Jennifer Garner) crossed with Sunset Beach (insane story lines episode after episode, each crazier than the previous one). It’s fantastic and unfortunately I missed the start of Season 4 of the show so decided to wait until they reran it. No need as I’ve now got the box set courtesy of my brother! We’ve watched the first 9 episodes and it’s still as amazing as ever - and that Jennifer Garner gets sexier by the season…

Some Excellent Macadamia Nuts

I love macadamia nuts. I’d eat them all the time except Britain is the worst country in the world for quality food. The French PM is absolutely right when he says the UK has the worst food in the world. It’s terrible. However you only realise this when you travel abroad and try other food then come home to what they pass off as tasty. The only time I manage to get good macadamia nuts (among other things) is when I’m in another country or there’s a French travelling market in town. So it was with some surprise that I opened these ones and discovered that they were definitely up to standard! As a result they didn’t last very long… But at least I know where to get more.

Anyway, that’s a quick list of some of the nice things I received this year. Much more than I deserve but what can I do? Now, onto the New Year!

The highlight of my weekend was undoubtedly attending one of my oldest friend’s weddings. I say oldest but I really mean longest (he’s the same age as me after all). It was a fantastic day, the bride looked amazing and he brushed up pretty well too. It was set in one of the most impressive castles I’ve seen (Menzies Castle) and it was really nice to see people I hadn’t seen in years. But almost overshadowing the day for me were a couple of things I found out…

Back at school 4 of us were really good friends. Myself, the groom and the two best men at the wedding (yep, two heads is better than one) - I’ll not name names to protect the innocent. Anyway, I moved down to Yorkshire 6 years ago and we didn’t see each other as much although I kept in touch more with the groom than the other two. They both got married (one 4 years ago and the other a year later) and I didn’t get invited. I didn’t think anything of it and despite being invited to the stag do for the first one I didn’t mention not being invited as I didn’t want to make him feel awkward. It was in Ireland so I just assumed they couldn’t invite everyone they wanted and as I’d moved away they’d moved on and that was fair enough.

When the second wedding happened a year later it was brought forward a few months for unforeseen circumstances and again when I wasn’t invited I just assumed that as it was a rushed job there wasn’t enough room, etc. I really didn’t take any offence, I’m not that sort of guy and I knew that weddings are expensive businesses.

When I got invited to this wedding we were one of the first people to accept. So it was with some surprise that mid-way through the evening the wife of my first friend came up to me and started to have a go about the fact that I never replied to their wedding invitation! I wracked my brains for a while because I’d forgotten all about it but eventually we came to realise that I had actually been invited but had never gotten the invitation! I hadn’t mentioned it at the time because I didn’t want to make waves and for the last 4 years they’d thought I was a rude git for ignoring them. I felt terrible even though looking back there’s not much else I could have done.

Still feeling bad about that can you imagine how I felt when the wife of my second friend came up to me and started having a go about the fact that I didn’t reply to their wedding invitation either?! That wedding was fresher in my memory because my mother was ill around that time and I distinctly remembered not being invited - but again the invite had never made it to my house. I couldn’t believe it. All these years the reason I hadn’t stayed in touch with two of my best friends was because of a simple misunderstanding. I’d just assumed they’d moved on in their lives whereas they were harbouring a grudge because I’d spurned their wedding invites. They’d thought it was out of character for me (which it absolutely was) but didn’t pick up the phone at the time so we never knew. Sort of put a dampener on the evening really (but not too badly).

Well, the lessons here are when you don’t hear from someone you invite to your wedding, phone them! Secondly, don’t trust the Royal Mail - people still steal mail and especially if it looks like there’s money in there (I guess a wedding invitation can look like a birthday card). Also, I’ve got a second chance to stay in touch with two of my oldest friends and their wives and that’s a chance I’m going to take.

What with all this job hunting, football playing, redecorating, net surfing and TV watching I’ve been doing lately I felt I needed a few days rest. I did this by driving back to my father’s house and staying there. It’s a big, quiet, relaxing house and the one place that I can feel truly at peace. I spent a great many years there growing up and all the happy memories from that time are there. It’s a quiet neighbourhood in a nice little village and it’s only when I go back that I realise why my parents settled there in the first place. It’s a really nice part of the world.

The relaxation starts as soon as I hit the motorway heading north. If I head south the roads just get busier and busier until it’s a standstill (I’ll write an article about why all lorry drivers should be killed another time) but northwards has the opposite effect until I’m driving all on my own. I set my cruise control to 90 mph and never needed to touch it all the way home - there just wasn’t any traffic (it’s okay, I did slow down for roundabouts).

I visited some friends and their son (who is 1 already, I can’t believe how time flies), I went running around my old playground (Tenstmuir forest), watched some films, listened to some music and just recharged my batteries. I also had a bit of fun getting the cat to chase around a laser pointer (all I’ll say is I’m glad I’m not a mouse, the cat’s reflexes are incredible). Anyway, back to job hunting and interview preparations…