See, here I am now sitting by myself, uh, er, talking to myself. That's, that's chaos theory.

Clearly, I’ve been a little neglectful in posting here lately. Blame it on my plain ol’ inability to see anything through to the

Anyway, I promised Tom that there would be a sea change in my attitude towards the blog*, and that I’d begin contributing with some regularity. Something more constructive than, “oops Tom, I’ve accidently deleted all of the free advertising that you painstakingly set up.” And more substantial than, “hey Tom, I spent twenty minutes playing with all the fonts and backgrounds.” (nice though, huh?)

The Tomatron has been keeping you abreast of all the important developments in our interracial swim-fest – with tales about board-games that may or may not have happened, and encounters with people that may or may not exist. Add to that mix, the cocoa buoy game, underwater performance art and ooh, too tight swim-shorts, and you have the last six weeks of intense swim training in a nut-shell.

Actually, speaking of swim shorts, Tom continues to extol the virtues of his fantastic new Aquablade Hydroshorts, attributing everything and anything to their existence. Those points agreed, I must admit to experiencing slight feelings of inadequacy in the swimming trunks department (wait, I have a feeling that’s going to be easy to misconstrue). As a consequence I’ve decided that my own swimming trunks are in need of a flashy, gimmicky name. Oh yes. From now on dear readers you’re going to be hearing plenty** about Seb’s mega-ultra-uber-super-duper-holy-cow!-hyper-hydro shorts.

So, with regular service resumed, I’ll leave you with the video I posted - and subsequently deleted - last week. The public outcry for its reinstatement was over-whelming.






* but evidently not towards water-based puns.
** i.e more than you'd ever care to know.

What've they got in there, King Kong?

Ok, so after last week's strange outing, it's back to normality for the most recent training session.

"Unfortunately, the transvestite didn't turn up." I said to Seb as we drove to Brentwood.
"Oh," said Seb. "That's a shame."
"Never mind." I said, concluding a story that has no relevance to our swim for glory, and so needs no elaboration. We drove on in silence for a while. "What are you going to do today?" I asked Seb. "I think I'll do some swimming." He answered, in an exchange that is swiftly becoming a weekly tradition.

In the pool, I swam only 1.5 Kilometres, less than the 2.5 I have managed to squeeze into the relatively short time available to us in the pool. On the pool timetable, tonight's session is labelled as "Adult swim". I think this must mean you have to be an adult, and not necessarily behave like one, as we certainly didn't.

We played that game where you throw something into the middle of the pool and then have to swim out and collect it before it hits the floor. We threw our locker keys. As Seb threw his, for me to collect, I noticed that it was falling worryingly close to the grate at the bottom of the pool. I pretended to be a sealion and picked it up in my mouth, just in time. It was like Die Hard but wetter. Then we did our underwater lung capacity improvement training, only this time, we were in the deep end of an almost empty pool. I chose to face outwards, towards the rest of the pool when I did mine, as opposed to facing the wall. During my attempt I realised I was doing a "Jesus on the cross" type pose, and that the dappling light penetrating the surface of the empty pool is quite a picturesque sight, as viewed from underwater. Not for the first time, I thought to myself how much better this will look in the open ocean. Anyway, my Jesus pose must have helped, as I managed 55 seconds underwater twice in a row!!

Naturally, I became quite enthused by the possibilities presented by the scenic background of the people-less pool of liquid light, so the last ten minutes of the session were passed in the following way: "Ok, I've got one Seb!! Go underwater, and see my performance art!!" I would then swim down to the bottom, empty my lungs, and sit on the floor of the pool in various poses e.g. sitting cross-legged facing away from the viewer (Seb), a David Brent Reclining Pose, and a "Standing upright, facing Seb, Arms folded, tapping my foot" pose, to name but a few. Seb commented on the fact that I am only one of two people who he sees regularly doing the David Brent Reclining Pose (DBRP). The other is someone mentioned way back in the beginning of this very blog, a lovely fella, who has a car he calls Nancy, named Mike. Hi Mike!!!

P.S. If you saw the video posted by Seb recently on here, and were disappointed by its deletion (Also carried out by Seb, as he was concerned about any embarrassment the video would cause me, bless him), just leave a comment saying so. If you didn't see the video, and are now intrigued, leave a comment saying so. If you couldn't care less, either leave a comment saying so, or don't bother. Either's fine.

You Bred Raptors?!

Here's a little fun game. I'll tell a story about last week's experiences, and you have to guess which bit actually happened:

On the way to the Brentwood centre in Seb's car, we went over a particularly nasty pothole on Warley road, and the black ice caused us to skid. I went mental, but Seb kept calm, and managed to bring the car to a safe stop, although we were a little shaken.

We got out of the car to survey the damage, just as it started to rain. I wandered over to a stream which ran alongside the road. The stream was fairly fast flowing, and the water level very high, as it had been raining quite heavily for the past few days. I noticed a dark, box-shaped object caught up in the branches. As you may imagine, dear reader, I was more than a little intrigued. I looked over at Seb, who had finished inspecting the car and was standing by the open driver's door. He said "I think it's all ok, V Diddy...Shall we get back on the road?" I looked all handsome and thoughtful for a second, then said "Hang on a sweet moment there, Sebbro!! I've spotted something." As Seb looked on, with an amused and curious expression on his pleasant face, I scrambled down the riverbank, and just managed to reach the box as I said "I can reach it, Dad!!" I clambered back up the slope, and Seb remarked "I thought I lost you, boy!!!"

He then realised that, although very funny, the statement did nothing to advance the plot, so he said "What the heckaroo is in that box, do you think?"

I just stared at the wooden box while wiping the mud and silt from it, and slowly, amazingly, the word "JUMANJI" appeared from underneath the dirt. Some beautiful woodwind music started as I looked up at Seb and whispered "Jumanji..."

Then the drums started.

Five minutes later, in Seb's car, Seb had rolled the two dice in the first throw of a spectacular adventure. We leaned in over the Obsidian circle in the middle of the board as Seb's Ebony Gibbon figurine moved seven spaces forward. "Must be Nonochromatic Electromagnetism or something" I said, speculatively.

We both read, in quivering, yet buoyant voices:

"Don't be scared, you must believe....He's not a psycho; his name is Steve."

We looked at each other quizzically. "Who's Steve?" I asked nervously.
"I don't...know" Seb answered, unsure.
Just then, a knock on the window made us both jump. A man with a friendly face and ginger hair stood the other side of the car window, smiling pleasantly. He made the international gesture for "Please roll down your window". Seb did so. The man spoke, and when he did so, it was in a voice that can only be described as "Normal".

"Hello!" he normalled, "My name is Steve!"
Seb and I looked at each other, confused, but relieved. "Hello Steve!" we said in unison.
"Do you need anything?" he asked.
"Errm... Not at the moment thanks, Steve." I said.
"Ok then." said Steve. "I'll be off"
And he left, just as amiably as he had arrived.

"Right, that was weird." said Seb, extremely accurately. "Your turn."
I rolled the dice. A Two and a Three. Obediently, my Ivory Bearded Capuchin monkey crept forward five spaces. We leaned over the darkness, in preparation for another absolutely average manifestation of an as yet entirely friendly, yet somewhat disappointing game of Jumanji.

"Now Steve is gone, you gain some clarity....Beware the Quantum singularity." We read together.

"What's a quantum singularity?" asked Seb.
"Something to do with Black holes" I answered, remembering something from a book about space I read when I was eight years old and drunk one day. "If I remember correctly, it's the point of space and time at which all laws of physics break down completely, and absolutely anything can happen."
"Anything?!" Seb asked, visibly worried.
"Absolutely anything."

Just then, Postman Pat turned up, holding Greg Rusedski in a test tube. "Hello Seb!!" Pat said, before Seb changed colour to luminous pink and travelled 28 seconds into the future. I hardly noticed this, as I was too busy swatting away the Dawn Frenches from my shoulderblade.

Then I swam 100 lengths of a 25 metre swimming pool in Essex.

"Angus Deayton, what are you doing here?" I asked. He didn't answer me because he was in the process of spraying the Atlantic ocean onto Genghis Khan's nostalgia. Helen of Troy watched the whole scene in confusion. Her leg fell off and married my face. I wasn't feeling too comfortable by this point.

Then Alpha Centauri kindly made everyone a cup of tea, except he put Hypnogogic hallucinations in mine, when I clearly asked for a West Nigerian orange-bellied Sparrow's reproductive cycle. Then Seb came back from the past, and spluttered "Tom!! You'll never guess what?"
"What?" I Fidel Castroed.
"Steve's back!" He shouted, pointing at a horseshoe crab's liver.
I don't know if he meant this metaphorically or not, but I definitely heard his friendly, familiar voice in the solid core of Neptune.

The End.

Or is it?