Dan McNeil's Blog

To the untrained ear, my accent sounds Liverpudlian.  And to a certain extent, it is.  Whenever anyone asks me where I'm originally from, if I'm giving the very high level answer, I tend to say "near Liverpool". Which isn't untrue; it's just maybe a bit vague. Accents in the North West of England are very specific.  In the distance from Liverpool to Manchester, you cross many different accents and all in the space of 40 miles or so.  But if you're not from the area, you tend to just think of accents such as mine as "Scouse". Of course, growing up I didn't think I had an accent.  Just as growing up in a family where every household was a smoking household you become immune to the smell of cigarette smoke.  Nowadays I can smell the smoke on my clothes long after leaving the smoky place, but back then it was just normal and as everything smelled the same way, I never noticed. But nowadays I hear the accents up here, and then sound Liverpu...

Someone said to me the other day "it's a very glittery year for Christmas Cards, isn't it?".  So that got me thinking - how many Christmas Cards do have glitter on them these days?  And so I looked through all the cards sitting on our sideboard, and I counted.  The result is below... So there you have it.  40% of the cards we received this year have glitter on them. But that's not very rigorous, is it?  So before I start going deeper into some stats about this year's Christmas cards, let me tighten things up a little bit. Firstly, sample size.  Well to tell you how many Christmas cards we received would be vulgar, and definitely "not a very British thing to do" so I'm not going to tell you the sample size.  But I will tell you that it's large enough that these figures are pretty meaningful.  Of course, the sample is biased by the fact that we only received cards from people we know - and we probably do know people who fit more ...

It's Christmas time again.  I can't say I'm a great fan of Christmas. The enforced fun, the endless invites to parties, the queues at the supermarkets to buy huge quantities of food that nobody will ever eat.  It all just leaves me cold. Don't get me wrong - we do put up a tree, and do send out cards - I just don't really go in for the boozy nights out and the artificial inflation of my mood to match the artificially inflated moods of those around me.  We're not all happy at Christmas and no amount of painting on of smiles and singing of carols is going to force us to be. Christmas doesn't make me unhappy. It doesn't make me feel anything to be honest.  It washes over me as I hide away from the work parties and drunk people on the tube of an evening.  I isolate myself from it as much as is possible. Earlier this week I was in Starbucks and after I had paid, the guy behind the till did this strange manoeuvre towards me.  Pointing at me with both hands ...

A couple of years ago, these adverts started to appear around the place for the annual poppy appeal. The idea is that they make you feel something in response to not wearing a poppy.  "How would you feel if you weren't the one wearing a poppy?". I resent the assumption that everyone wishes to advertise their charitable donations by wearing a visible symbol.  You simply can't assume that everyone who isn't wearing a poppy hasn't made a donation. Wearing a poppy has become too empowered over the years.  No longer is it "something that some people wearing around this time of the year" but it's turned into a obligation. You do (genuinely) gets looks and stares and sometimes even get asked about it if you approach 11th November without wearing a poppy on your lapel. I am a poppy-non-wearer.  I never wear a poppy.  But then again I never wear any other charitable symbol.  Not a red ribbon, nor a pink ribbon, nor a wristband or red nose. So...

I am starting to feel old.  I don't mean that I'm starting to creak and need to hold the banister when walking up the stairs, but I mean that things are happening around me to make me realise I'm not 20 anymore. I mentioned on Facebook, the story of the survey on the phone, so apologies if you're already read it there, but I repeat it here as it didn't help stop me feeling old. A guy called and was from a survey firm.  Having done a few such surveys before I actually don't mind doing them, and he said this one would only take a few minutes.  He asked me a few questions about Brazil, and whether I'd go on holiday there.  He asked whether I knew of any events happening in Brazil, and I said "I think the World Cup is in Brazil, but don't know whether it's happened yet. Has it?".  He then went on to ask me whether I went to the World Cup. I presume he was reading from a script rather than being that stupid. Anyway, we got to the end, and ...

In recent years, I've lost two close relatives.  My Grandmother died not that long ago ( see here for her story - it's worth a read ) and back in 2010 my Dad died ( see here for a rather different take on the aftermath of a close family death ). When my Grandfather died, over ten years ago, the thing to do was to get a vicar to do the service.  Neither my Granny nor Grandfather actually believed in God (strangely, my Granny's logic was that no God would've allowed the things that happened to her family to happen, and that's when she lost her faith) but it was just the thing to do. A few years later, and my Dad was ill.  He'd been ill for years and he knew the end was coming.  He had managed years at home thanks to getting on the internet, home grocery deliveries and Amazon for DVDs.  Although he didn't get out of the house much, the computer kept him connected to the outside world. But in 2010, it was obvious that the ten years of living with COPD were...

I had a dream last night. I dream often, although last night's dream was particularly vivid. I was on a plane next to man who I took to be Canadian.  I may have presumed he was Canadian because he was wearing a red checked shirt.  Anyway, he appeared halfway through the flight.  He told me that he had suffered from the "Broadport Slip".  Broadport was the town where it first happened to him.  From time to time, he found himself slipping forward in time.  He would walk through a doorway, or wake up, and find that years had passed by, and the world had become alien to him. He was eternally sad and detached, for every time he got close to someone, he'd find that at some point - it could be tomorrow, it could be next week - he'd suddenly find years had slipped by.  Those he loved would be old.  They would have moved onto new friends, new families.  Or worse, they would have died, having spent the last twenty years of their lifes wondering whe...