Wonky wrist-itis and talking to God on the big white telephone

Yes, another blog that's taken quite a while to write. The gaps between blogs seem to get bigger all the time. It's not that I don't enjoy writing them, or that exciting stuff happens - I mean, that thing, with the tiger, in Belize, that was ace.

No, it's just that I'm writing all over the place at the moment. I'm blogging about films and TV and getting total strangers either telling me I'm an idiot or that I make them 'laugh out loud at work' - which is nice (unless the latter is the CEO of my company, and he's reading the magazine I edit). I'm writing my other blog, the one no-one knows about, not even me (am I making that up? you'll find out? Or will you?). Then I'm writing this other thing, which is kind of why I'm here now - digging up old jokes and repurposing them for another use.

And the other reason is that I've been sick over the past month or so. First up, my hand stopped working. Now, that's worrying for most people, but for writers, mime artists and lonely teenage boys, it's downright catastrophic. I had a bout of, what is technically called, erm, wonky-wristitis. That meant my left hand couldn't grip properly and I had to sleep with it elevated (i.e. on a pillow, not in a facist salute all night).

Checked out by a specialist I had a variety of treatments including some light physio, a brace to keep it in position, oh and a RUDDY MASSIVE NEEDLE INTO MY WRIST JOINT. To be honest, that didn't hurt at all, because I had local anaesthetic. So if you have to have it, you'll be fine.

I am, of course, lying. It was bloody awful. Worse than toenail surgey. Worse than turning on TV and finding all channels have Myleene Klass on. I actually had to laugh out loud, really loud, for 15 seconds as the sadistic kind man pumped cortisone into my joint.

Well, the good news is that it seems to have fixed it. Which was great, as until then I had a wrist limper than John Inman, in a special zero gravity version of Are You Being Served?

Then, a few weeks later, I came down with food poisoning. Now, don't believe the hype, it's not the glamourous condition that people have hyped up it up to be. One dodgy curry starter seems to have been the source. A mixed kebab. Well, it was mixed when it came back up.

2 days until I could eat properly. A week until I could function like a human again. Alright, maybe my fault for being a fatty, but seriously - does it have to be that nasty? Can't the human body have an 'undo' facility that doesn't last the best part of a week?

So that's my excuse. Wonky wrist and wonky, well, I won't go into more detail than that. That and all the writing. Still, nice to pop by and find that people are still happening by this page and even leaving comments on old posts.

And I thought I was the sick one...

Co-incidence? You decide...

When I recently read that we are now only 3 steps away from everyone in terms of being connected I must admit that I was sceptical. A handy bit of research to make a good bit of PR I thought.

But then I considered some of the stuff that has happened to me.

I got a new job, quite by chance, with a mobile phone company. The chap I took over from here had just got engaged and there were lots of congratulations messages on his facebook page. One was from his cousin. She looked vaguely familiar.

I did a bit of checking and it turns out that she was the best friend of my best friend's girlfriend at Uni, someone, I had been drinking with many times and last saw in 1997.

At that moment it was like the world stopped spinning, zoomed in on me for a minute, back out to the edge of the solar system and then started up again. I felt simulataneously the smallest yet biggest person in the whole universe, like it was all put together for a reality programme like in The Truman Show.

You might not think that was a great co-incidence. But I've moved 450 miles around this country, had various jobs, made crucial decisions at certain times in my life, yet there was my life falling back into the path of my past without my knowing it. It's all some sort of wibbly-wobbly-timey-wimey thing if you ask me.

How does that work? How do these connections pop up time and again? I rented a room off a chap who went on holiday to Australia, he met a girl, completely at random, in a bar in Melbourne. When they both returned to the UK I met her and it turned out that at her place of work she sat next to a girl I had worked with for about a year some 350 miles away.

That same girl I worked with, years before, had a part time job as one of two barmaids at a college bar in Cheltenham. The same college bar that i always went to when visiting my girlfriend of the time in Cheltenham - she must have served me a drink.

Utterly. Completely. Mad. Brain. Hurt. Need. Lie. Down.

I did some research and, apparantly, this is why 'miracles' are perceived to happen -because there are so many variables, and bits of information being processed (millions a day) that eventually something co-incidental is much more likely to happen than not.

Frankly, it just makes my head hurt. And if you managed to read all of this without it hurting you too, then you're clearly a lot cleverer than me.

Hello, is that the Chicken Cafe?

How do you get away from people you don't want to speak to? It used to be impossible, as you had to pick a ringing phone as things like caller id didn't exist.

When I was young we used to get phonecalls every night, regular as clockwork with people asking "Is that the Chicken Cafe?". It happened for months. Turned out our number was the same as a place called "The Chicken Cafe" in a nearby town. Same number, different area code.

It got so prevalent we started answering the phone with a cluck and once told a customer we were full because of a big egg conference in the area.

Of course, now mobiles have come along and made it easier by showing you who was phoning. Then it moved on to allowing you to customise the ringtone and picture on your phone, to give you more warning. I actively have pictures of monsters and villains to represent the people I don't want to speak to. If Dracula pops up, I ain't speaking to him (he works in Banking).

So it should be so easy now to avoid speaking to the wrong people. Well, it should. Until your phone tells you that call is from "private number" and human nature takes over.

I know that "private number" more than likely means it's from a place with lots of phones that go through an exchange. But whenever it pops up I'm always intrigued. I think that it might be from someone like the Premium Bonds people, someone headhunting me for an amazing job testing PS3 games for a living or maybe the local curry house offering me a loyalty card.

So, inevitably, I have to pick up. And then I find it's my bank or a telesales call and I'm miffed. I seem to get a lot of people offering me a chance to win a cruise - the most woefully inaccurate piece of marketing I've ever experienced - they might as well be inviting me to my own guillotining.

Why can't it be someone amazing once in a while? A friend of mine works in the media and has become good friends with an icon from my teenage years, so apparantly one day my phone will ring - an unknown number and when I answer I'll be speaking with 90's pop icon Betty Boo.

And you know what. It did. And she was very nice to me, despite the fact I sounded like a mentalist stalker.

Take that Chicken Cafe.