Odd Thomas Odd Blog

I'm not sure if it's the quarter of watermelon that's messing with my stomach, or the sudden realisation that I am about to do something I have never done before, but with two days to go, it's now doing somersaults. I can't deny that I am wondering what I have signed up for, but really hoping I can get to the end - though I guess it wouldn't be a challenge if I thought I could sail through it! Earlier this week, I worked my way through the recommended kit list to make sure I had everything, but there are still things missing that I need to get hold of, so a trip to Cotswold Outdoor tomorrow may be needed to get the final few bits and pieces.  Even then, with almost everything you see in the image below (I culled a few clothes), there was no room for food, which is a concern for a muncher like myself :-/ I've been mulling over how I can share my progress, since I am not directly on Facebook any more, and for those that know me personally, I'll be traying...

The final week in the run up to the South West Coast-to-Coast is here and, in less than a week, I will be starting my first UltraChallenge in order to raise money for Crohn's and Colitis UK . Since doing the massive 32 mile training walk a month ago, I have been able to get out for shorter walks once or twice a week, which have been steadily getting longer.   On Saturday, I managed 12.37 miles in a decent 3 hours 39 minutes, though with the wrong choice of shoes, which left me with blisters and sore feet.  It really made me appreciate how good my boot and sock combo is! Oh, and underwear.  Having walked in normal boxers and suffered the chafed consequences for a day or so, I ended up buying a couple of pair of SAXX Boxer Briefs .  I'm generally not one for buying expensive undies and feel that even £22 for 3 pair of boxers is somewhat extortionate.  However, if you want to feel like the family jewels are in good hands and you want to be able to shower afte...

  Back in 2019, my brother-in-law asked if I would be interested in undertaking 2020's South West Coast-to-Coast Ultra Challenge .  I had seen both he and my sister go through a number of these challenges and so, with all the naivety of the inexperienced - and despite several of my sister's toenails dropping of - I optimistically thought, "Why, not?!" Roll on 2020 and, as we all know, the world ungracefully fell apart.  As a result, the challenge was cancelled and the team my brother-in-law started, Chafed in Places, was disbanded.  Fortunately, we could move our registration to 2021, which I duly did and started to think about training.  Occasionally. Now, with four long-distance training walks under my belt, I am just a fortnight away from destroying my feet in a 102km trek across a beautiful part of the UK.   Starting at Minehead in Somerset on Saturday, 24 July, I will be walking pretty much non-stop to Dawlish in Devon, really only pausing for po...

Time to find out whodunnit!! The Centralians are back with their Autumn production, Prescription for Murder , which is running until Friday, 18 October 2019 . Dr. Richard Forth is a busy man in Bere Knighton with a hectic work life, an awkward relationship with an old girlfriend and with a wife, Barbara, who is constantly ill.  When a stranger arrives claiming to know Richard's second fiancee - someone he claims not to know - Barbara's health worsens ... and she is not the only one.  With bad luck spreading as quickly as bad news, it seems someone is trying to kill Barbara, and anyone else who stands in their way. Tickets are selling fast, so it is a good idea to book, though there will always be some available on the door if you decide to come along last minute. And yes, yours truly will be appearing in this as the stranger.  The script called for a good looking young man, but we've had to go with what we have instead, so if anyone wants to join us, feel free ...

Breakaway Theatre 's production of The Tempest was an eye opener for me.  After my Aunt took me to see a production of Shakespeare's play back in the late 1990s, I had come away wondering exactly what it was I had just seen; it was loud, overly dramatic and hard to follow.  By contrast, Lesley Cowland's interpretation of the well-known classic was fun, entertaining and relatable ... in part, due to the space theme, which had more than a few nods to both Star Wars and Star Trek! Above all, I actually understood what was happening! Presented in the grounds of the Inn on the Park , St Albans, this was also my first open-air theatre production, which meant very little set design by necessity, proving - to me, at least - that over-indulgent sets really aren't required if you have a strong performance. Luckily for you, there are still more performances later this week, so you haven't missed out yet!  Even if you are one of those people that "doesn't do Sha...

With the bank holiday weekend about to start, think about The Centralian Players working hard to build their next set for Peter Gordon's play, Third Week in August , while you sun yourself on the beach, enjoy your BBQ and refuse to let the Great British Rain Off stop you enjoying the break.

With 2019 well and truly under way, The Centralian Players are back with a new production to entertain you, this time a double-bill of two one-act plays. First up is Shadows , written by Josephine Carter , which explores the life of Erica, an elderly lady living alone in a single room of her home, happy with her memories.  When her family comes to visit and move her to a home, the past is ever present, but who is shadow and who is not?

It's that time of year again when The Centralian Players are building up to their final production of the year, this time performing Over My Dead Body , by the late playwright and actor, Derek Benfield . The play centres around Gerald, recently widowed, who plans to spend the rest of his days alone with his memories, not realising his late wife had other plans!  With the help of his daughter and son-in-law, Gerald does his best to keep unexpected visitors at bay and maintain his independence, but memories revive events from the past which are both funny and sad.

For those who enjoyed Steve Barker's debut as a playwright with his production of Awkward! , you will be pleased to hear he has been bashing away in front of his computer for the past year and is about to release his second play on an unsuspecting public. Backstage / Farce is a two-act play about a local drama group, the Bluebell End Players, who are preparing for - and performing - the opening night of their production, A Bit of Slap and Tickle .  As you may expect from a farce, things do not go according to plan as the group battle their way through frayed tempers, bad nerves, and missing cast members!

Now 2018 is solidly under way, the time has come for The Centralian Players to entertain you with their next production; no prizes for guessing the theme of their latest show!! An American Farce,  Sex Please, We're Sixty!  covers the comings and goings of guests and neighbours to the prim Mrs Stancliffe's Rose Cottage B&B, proving that a little bedroom fun can be enjoyed at any age ;-)

Okay, I need you to go get your diary - or open your calendar if you are technically inclined.  Go on, I can wait... ... Got it?  Good. Now find 19, 20 & 21 October - I'm assuming it's a 2017 calendar you are looking at!  Anything pencilled in for those dates?  No?  Excellent!  Pick one of them and write the following entry: The Winslow Boy, Henderson Hall, Abbots Langley @ 19:15 Now you have an entertaining evening lined up with The Centralian Players' production of Terence Rattigan's play about a Naval Cadet accused of theft and his Father's fight to clear his name.  To make sure you have a seat, you can book tickets with the Box Office on:  (01923) 227392 Last Sunday saw the first set build get underway and by the end of the day, a large amount of the set had been built and decorated ready for the first rehearsal on stage since auditions back in July. The state of the set when I first arrived The sta...

In four weeks time, The Centralian Players will once again be performing at Henderson Hall, Abbots Langley, with their production of The Winslow Boy , written by Terence Rattigan  and performed under license from Samuel French . With 11 cast members, this production is larger than normal and sees the debut of the group's youngest member, Daniel Remmington, playing the role of The Winslow Boy, a young naval cadet accused of stealing and his Father's fight to clear his name. If you are interested in booking tickets, please contact the booking office using the details on the poster above; there is no need to pay now as payment will be required when you collect the tickets from the box office.  If you cannot make the booking for any reason, all they ask is that you let them know so they can make the tickets available to others. As the production is still a few weeks away, why not like their Facebook Page or Twitter account so you can be alerted of updates.  Better...

Who's up for a game?  I'm going to call it the Starbucks Name Chain (hopefully, nobody else has come up with this yet!). The rules are really simple: Go to Starbucks and buy a drink of your choice, as you normally would Give them your name when asked  If the name on the cup does not match yours - and experience suggests this is highly likely - adopt this as your new name! Change your name on social media (completely optional, especially if the platform complains!) Next time you go to Starbucks, use your new name! How long does it take for you to get back to your real name?   Currently, I am living as Roger... [UPDATE] I thought it would be a fun idea to change my name on Facebook to reflect the Starbucks name change.  I thought wrong.  Apparently, Facebook will lock you in to your name change for 60 days before you can make any further changes.  This puts a dampener on any fun and means, regardless of any further name changes by Starbucks,...

When Amazon introduced the Echo in the UK, it was the first time in a very long time I had been eager to try out some new technology; I had been waiting for the Google Home , but Amazon got there first so ended up with my money . My own personal feeling is that consumer technology seems to have stagnated over the past 5 years, with only incremental instead of revolutionary advances, so nothing really piqued my interest until affordable home control came into being, something that was finally within my budget.  Being able to combine it with the Philips Hue system was great; though trying to find answers to questions proved ... interesting. Then, back in June, I decided to try and build my first Alexa skill.  Nothing major, just a feed from this blog as a daily flash briefing.  It worked, but I decided not to publish it as I would hardly consider the content of this blog to be frequent or interesting enough to warrant it joining the likes of CNN, BBC, Sky, and the re...

Taking a page out of Facebook's ... um ... book, you will notice this blog has had yet another change to it's template! It seems like only a few posts ago that I changed the template to something a bit cleaner - which is probably true - but with the length of time between posts being something of an epoch, I figured those of you who do pop by from time to time could probably do with a change.  I know I did when I logged back on. Up to now, I have been bemoaning the fact that Blogger is not as flexible as Wordpress and considering moving everything over to something a bit more popular.  However, after wasting time configuring this latest template, I have discovered that ThemeForest have a range of Blogger templates !! Who knew?!?! If there are Blogger themes on ThemeForest, then there must be other options elsewhere.  So, you can look forward to an all new look in the coming weeks, just as soon as I have worked out how to do it. Nothing like having a bi...

On the weekend of 1/2 July 2017, my brother-in-law is walking 100km in an effort to raise money through his JustGiving page for Sands, the Stillbirth and Neonatal Death Charity .  What follows below is a very personal story of loss from a Dad's perspective...

As if it wasn't narcissistic enough that I have a blog about the random stuff in my life - of which there is PLENTY I have yet to tell you all - my desire to learn something new has lead to the creation of an Alexa skill that should read my latest posts to you as part of your flash briefing! The motivation behind this is a bit more mundane. As a tech developer who is always looking for new things to get to grips with, I thought it would be a simple introduction into the world of Alexa skills development; certainly the creation of content skills seems to be the easiest route to get started, with this blog providing an RSS feed managed by Feedburner .  As skills go, it isn't exactly going to be the most popular and would probably be a good candidate for some kind of 'worst app' award, but as it is really just a test and an introduction to the tech, I'm not overly worried about it.  Yet. However, it is still in test as I am learning the Alexa developer interface ...

Well, after around 10 to 12 weeks of rehearsing, opening night is finally here ... and I am in NO WAY READY!!! It doesn't matter how often I go through my lines and feel that even if I don't know the exact words I can work with it, as soon as I set foot at the venue - if not before - the adrenalin kicks in, my stomach ties itself into knots and my brain goes completely blank.  Not the best of fight or flight responses if I can't even think of what to do - I doubt I would survive in the wild!!! This has been a tough one to rehearse for a great many reasons, but we have had all the practice available and it is now time for cast and crew to assemble and put on a good show.  So, if you fancy seeing an amateur dramatics company performing a thriller over the next three evenings, why not pop along as there are still tickets available. Deliver Us From Evil by J.D Robins Venue: Henderson Hall, Abbots Langley, Hertfordshire, WD5 0AR ( Map ) Production Dates: 18, ...

Last year was a tough one, in so many ways, and I have yet to be convinced that this year will be better, but we will see.  However, in an effort to find something other than work to fill my time and get some of my previous enjoyment of life back, I have returned to the Centralian Players - admittedly after some encouragement from various quarters. In 9 days - Thursday, 26 January 2017, to be more specific - I will once again be appearing on stage at Henderson Hall in Abbots Langley, in a never-before-seen production, titled 'Awkward!'.  The script has been penned by our very own Steve Barker and everyone is hoping that it will eventually be published for other groups to perform. To summarise the plot, think of that moment when your tongue rattled something off before your brain could hold it in check.  Or that situation where you have to converse with someone you have nothing in common with.  Or that moment a piece of clothing let your modesty down.  We'...

Getting out of seriously in-grained habits is something quite tough to achieve, so when the 7 Weeks app (free version) appeared in a list of 'Similar' apps during a system re-installation, I thought I would give it a shot; the justification for which was if I can start some good habits, I could work up sensibly to taking part in Be Gung Ho later this year. Things didn't start well...