Sandwich Break

I was listening to Danny Baker yesterday and he asked the question 'how do cut your sandwich -  across the middle or diagonally?'

His assistant said she cut it down the middle and saved the top bit till last.

He queried this concept, but I know what she means. The top bit is the best bit. It's a sign of admirable self restraint to save that till the end. Some would eat it first, but leave themselves looking at crustily angular remainder.

A diagonally-cut sandwich of course yields that shop-bought feel. 

And eliminates two unsavourily dry points where crust meets crust.

Sure, it's an open invitation for the innards of the sarnie to drop onto your trousers, but Pret a Manger has made a perfectly good living out of exactly this sort of behaviour which is why they open all their franchises next to a dry cleaners.

Personally the oblique technique (which is what I have just decided I call it) is something I reserve for special occasions. I don't like to live beyond my means.

However there is a third way.

A little-known method. A darker route to satiety.

I'm willing to bet that many of my thousands of readers have never cut a sandwich in this way.

Some never will.

It is the longitudinal cut, through the top, and through the bottom.

It's not for the fainthearted. 

It's mix of symmetry and asymmetry will leave you uneasy. Queasy even.

If you've never done it before, for Gods sake, don't do it alone. 

That it makes the sign of the cross will not save you. 

You cut a sandwich this way at your own risk.

But know this....

It's how the devil gets in.

How to Speak

The first is the sort of thing you'd get from some amateurish speaker. Doing a class. Sharing their skills as a "qualified" speaker.

The second is what you hope to get from somebody who cares about what they're saying, somebody who might make a difference by yanking on the right tendrils of communication, connected deeply to supratentorial areas directly responsible for change.

The first is a Hallmark message from a greeting card. A message from a moron.

The second is the delivery of change. From love and experience, direct to the matrix.

WRONG

"I can only open the door for you. You have to go through it".

RIGHT

"I can only open the door for you. And standby and salute.

You have to raise yourself an inch into the air, steadily tilt yourself forward and fly through".

Subtle perhaps. (Not really).

But the difference between exhilarating success and grinding failure.

Spanish Unemployment Q

Err...So What!

I do so wish a few more people could start a few more sentences with the word 'so'. It's such a useful pointer to help me know when to listen to an erudite opinion.

But I admit that I do miss in verbalised conversational speech, the much maligned and much loved word 'errr'. 

'Errr' showed a certain sensitivity and self-doubt. It had a dash of humility and possibility. It showed engagement and interest, expressed concern, and thoughtfulness. It wondered at the differences between opinions and humanities. And it provided a low humming baseline to accompany a life in conversation.

'So' however, rips into that.

It cuts through the nonsense.

It present the conclusion to the debate. It ends. It pronounces. It judges. It labels. 

It links when there's nothing to link but it makes you think there is, that you missed something. 

It's a trick. A lie.

And now because you said 'so' and not 'no',  it's creeping into written speech.

Now we have two cancers of communication. 

It started with the arm-waving, propagated by BBC news reporters, going to far too many workshops and delivering their communications bimanually by manual. Now it has metastasised into our choice of words, starting sentences with an obnoxious "listen to me". It's hard to find a radio interview that 'so' does not dominate. 

It's like listening to a group of potty-training two-year-olds.

When I learnt Latin as a schoolboy 'so' and 'therefore' were synonyms, equally translated from the word 'ergo'.

So when I advise on this (ahem), usually I suggest intra-mental substitution of the word 'so' with 'therefore'. If it sounds wrong with the substitution in place, then it probably is.  

You're welcome.

Introducing a topic or even answering a question with the utterly redundant word 'so' is painful. It's become a curse of the last few years.  

You wouldn't find Frank, the new Pope, being so sloppy. (He is still heavily into ergo).

And he has his work cut out for him deciding whether he should persuade the rest of the Argies not to invade the Falklands again. Or tell them that they'll have God on their side this time.

Join the fight.  I will be running workshops from mid-June onwards.

Where will they be based?

So...Er-Google it.

Think of a Card

I started the last week with two pretty hard-core kind of work-related "official" things.

That took me to Wednesday. 

Since then I've been part of three fantastic things with potential to change a life, in this case mine and by extension potentially many others. In small ways, yes. But it's the little things isn't it? You don't need me to tell you that. 

I won't be too obscure. I'll tell you one of them is related to comedy and two of them relate to magic - one quite simply was the card magician Dani daOrtiz who physically stole my breath from my mouth on at least three occasions. I felt it go. 

If I can do this, with a week off work and would tend to have fewer of those experiences in a week dominated by work, surely the conclusion has to be... work less, do more.

Imagine what could be achieved.

Currently in the right corner of my eye is Limitless - a movie I had quite fancied except that it seems largely to concern pretty boy B-movie actor Bradley Cooper, doing a bit of a Lance Armstrong with his brain drug, so far resulting in him gaining a lot of money a lot and getting his end away quite a bit. Why anybody needs to see that, I'm not quite sure.

But the principle is sound. The limitless brain.

It will burn of course. (Bradley is already feeling the strain).

The protection that separates the two hemispheres (corpus callosum, in case you're interested) is the thing that keeps us sane. It is our limiting valve. I'd like to think that this will atrophy as we graduate into our next species. We will let the madness in and control it in our stride. The oneness of our creative and intellectual sides communicating with the universe with less facade, less workmanlike interface. Our biotech going wireless.

How far can we go?

How limitless is limitless?

Do you want to be a Joker - sandwiching the pack pressing at its face or pushing it up from the roots?

Or is it enough to go on being the 6 of clubs?

Red Nose Time

It's another Comic Relief.

Haven't they raised enough money for rhinophyma?

A Doc Called Horse

Follow me on this.

• The UK regulates the working practices of butchers.
• Butchers costs go up to ensure their product is to the world's highest standards.
• The supermarkets prioritise cost over quality.
• They outsource.
• Dodgy meat floods in from every unregulated source in Europe.
• (The low quality meat has illegal drugs in it. For good measure).
• Supermarkets get away with this for years, happily oblivious, 
• Then they suddenly panic and go cap in hand to the British butchers to rescue them.

Now substitute the words butchers/ meat with doctors/medical services, and supermarkets as GP commissioners.

Of course, you can omit the last line. They haven't returned to UK standards yet despite papers full of stories of NHS corrupt decision-makers, hospital  scandals and endlessly frequent Dispatches documentaries. 

After all where do you think Group 4, and 1000 other private tenders will be recruiting their next medics from? 

Prairies - wherever they are. That's where.

Death by Diddly-Dee

With some of the music choices people take as their Desert Island Discs, if it were me in the rescue boat, I'd be driving right past.
The fourteenth time of hearing an agonising baroque overture played on some medieval instrument would be all the evidence I need.
I'd send somebody with binoculars up the crow's nest to make sure the island's only resident had enough coconuts then I would turn up the 80s Hits Compilation and it would be full speed ahead.

The only thing I'd like to see played on those instruments of torture is the half wit choosing the records.

Circus Skills

You can say what you like about body art, but those girls who balance the shiny metal ball on their tongues without swallowing them do NOT get the credit they deserve.

Time Well Spent

I have started knitting.

I'm a knitter (or as my speech recognition program would have it, Anita)

Generally what I'm saying is, I do knitting now.

I don't, of course. That would be ridiculous.

But I might as well, as I've noticed that I have started doing things with less credibility than even that.

I am in the process of repairing a board game. (I have to be honest with you, it's an absolutely terrible use of my time).

But, it's my boardgame. In fact, slightly poetically, it is the Game of Life.

And I've let myself down, because I have actually repaired it before. And like an idiot I didn't ask Google for expert advice beforehand. Shamefully, I've discovered I didn't do a particularly good job.

A little research has told me that there is a golden rule that I was unaware of. (It is not a defence, I understand that ignorance of the law is no excuse, unless it's marital coercion).

It is simply this: 'Never put Sellotape (Scotch tape  - hello America) on the outside of the game box'.

This would not previously have occurred to me, but I recognise a ruthless truth when I have to.

So like Marty McFly going three decades back in time, I've had to rectify the wrong. So I have just spent a few hours removing the Sellotape from the fragile 30-year-old piece of cardboard - solvents/cotton buds/the whole nine yards. (Don't get too worried about me, the great thing is you can do it while you're watching Dallas).
So now, effectively I'm a knitter. That's what those patient wondrous chapesses do isn't it...watch Dallas and knit? (It's getting good by the way, Bobby's been arrested for murder and I still don't know how to pearl one).

I have to be honest. I didn't expect to find myself making this admission.

It's got me thinking about a few other admissions I'd like to introduce myself to.

So I'm thinking of becoming a Scientologist. Where is that Free Stress Test when you're actually looking for it? I can't believe I've walked past so many opportunities to mess with their heads. What was I thinking of?

At least where I live there is a Spiritual Evidence Society just down the road.

So don't call me on Thursday evenings.

It's Healing Hour.