Dan McNeil's Blog

It's now been just over a year since I quietly stopped drinking alcohol.  I'm not the first person to stop drinking, and I won't be the last, but making the decision not to drink alcohol has given me some insights into alcohol, and how people view it - and how people view those who don't drink it. Before I stopped drinking, I didn't drink that much anyway to be honest.  I certainly wasn't someone who drank much in latter years.  Back in my University days I could put away a whole bottle of Baileys, a fair amount of vodka and still not have a hangover the following day.  It was one of the few benefits of youth.  In fact it wasn't until my twenties that all those years of vodka started to catch up with me, and I started to feel what a real hangover could be like.  I started to get home at night and lie in bed watching the room spin around me, close my eyes to make it stop only for the spin speed to increase.  I just knew then that I'd regret it ...

Last night, I went to the theatre with some friends to see Knights Of The Rose.   We bought the tickets when we saw the song list and couldn't resist it.  But then as the day of the show grew closer I started to read reviews, and let's just say they weren't great.  In fact they were mostly awful. Well, let's be a little more specific; the reviews were universally terrible. I started to become concerned. The main concern of the reviewers seemed to be that the show was unknowing.  They suggested that whereas shows such as We Will Rock You and Rock Of Ages were ridiculous, they revelled in their own pomposity and broke the fourth wall to let you know that they were in on the joke.  No such fourth wall breaking here, and there was a clear thread in all the reviews that the show didn't know how silly it all was. But we had tickets, and so we turned up at the theatre and chatted beforehand about just how bad this could possibly be.  And we braced...

I've not written much in 2018.  I didn't write much in 2017 either, I don't think.  I guess the world has turned into the kind of place where there's no much fun to be found.  With Donald Trump and Brexit it's hard to find anything to laugh about, really. But you know, one has to keep waddling forwards into the future.  Face it with a grin. I'm never giving in.  And all that jazz. So, it's been sunny.  Too sunny.  The garden looks like someone's been out with a magic hoover and sucked all the green away.  The lawns are a torched shade of brown, although the hot weather has been great for this year's mulberry crop and the apple tree which collapsed last year has put on an astounding amount of new growth this year. It's hard to know how to keep cool in this weather.  I'm not someone who's comfortable going out and about in skimpy outfits, and so it tends to be polo shirts and jeans for me, which doesn't really help with the whole ...

I talk a lot on Facebook about my inability to speak French.  It's not from a lack of technical ability, but from a lack of comfort in speaking French out loud.  A lot of well meaning people try to tell me that I "should just try" and that "it doesn't matter if you make a few mistakes" but that's missing the point, unfortunately. Comfort in doing something is not always directly proportional to technical ability.  For some people, they can head over to France after a few lessons and take delight in ordering in a restaurant or buying something in a shop.  That's just not how I'm wired, and it's not something I'm ever going to be able to do. Or so I thought. Something struck me the other day whilst I was playing the piano.  We recently bought a piano for the house - I know, cool, eh? - and I quite often wander into the music room and plonk myself down and play and sing a couple of songs whilst waiting for dinner to cook in the Aga. ...

I had a fun dream the other night.  We had gone on a day trip to Saturn to see the ducks.  The leg room was cramped on the flight, but we landed in the Asda car park and took the stairs down onto the expanse of orange and yellow that was a Saturnian wetland.  The ducks looked pretty much like earth ducks, and bobbed in and out of the water. The landscape was full of strange flowers and focus, and we were admiring and photographing a green mushroom when a giant whale began to swim towards us through the water.  However as it got closer, it wasn't a whale.  It was just more ducks. So we took the optional excursion around to the dark side of the planet so you could see up into the night sky.  And when we got there, we looked up and saw the Earth and the Moon glittering with a million lights in the distance. It was magical, but soon had to come to an end when we followed the tour guide back to the cramped seats on the bus and got ready to go home. In the...

I like a good sofa.  A nice big sofa which is squishy enough to mould itself to my shape as I relax on it and yet not so soft as to let my back slip into a position that's going to cause me grief when I stand up. I've been sitting on sofas for a lot of my adult life, and never once has someone suggested to me that I should try sitting on something less comfortable in order that I see what it feels like, and maybe expand my definition of comfort. And yet, there seems to be an obsession with "getting outside ones comfort zone" as reason enough to do things wouldn't normally do - even to spend vast sums of money on them.  Some people thrive on a thrill.  Those are the people who enjoy the adrenaline rush of jumping out of a plane, or sticking their hands above their head on a roller coaster and enjoying the feeling of being upside down flying through the air. However, not everyone is wired that way.  I've been on roller coasters in the past, and they do...

I don't watch much TV, really. Well that's certainly whatever I say whenever anyone asks me which TV shows I watch.  I've never watched Breaking Bad or the new Netflix version of House of Cards .  I didn't watch Dr Foster or Broadchurch and I've given up on reality shows like The Apprentice and I'm A Celebrity which were an interesting idea for the first series, but must now just be the same old narrative played out with a new cast each year. I do watch a few things, though.  A few years ago I wrote about how I was getting bored with Doctor Who  and I'm happy to report that I did rather start to enjoy Peter Capaldi's time in the TARDIS and so I'm in no danger of losing my "regular viewer" status just yet.  I'm quite excited about Jodie Whittaker taking over, but maybe that's a good topic to save for a post of its own? ;-) I tend to find that my viewing habits tend to shift over time.  Many shows run on long past the point ...