Download the audio version here

We are doing a couple of festivals this weekend. If you’re at Shepley Festival on Friday then you will have the opportunity of seeing our first gig with a married man in the group, as this will be Sean’s first gig since his wedding. See if you notice any difference in terms of the performance. Fear not, if you are worried about The Young’uns becoming really bland as a result of this matrimony, I am still single, and so will still be showing off in a desperate bid to impress and be liked.

Returning to gigging will probably result in quite a few more visitors to this website and blog. The numbers always seem to rise whenever I’m gigging, and then dip down again after a period of none-gigging; how quickly they forget. When we won the folk award this year, the number of visitors to my website quadrupled. Yes, very funny, I can hear you making your own rubbish jokes about quadrupling meaning that I got ten visitors to my blog, but actually the joke’s on you, because I got twenty, so there. Anyway, on the day of the folk award win I got loads of people flocking to my website, and the same for the day after, but within a week, the numbers had returned to normal. This might be because these people are very fickle and quick to move on to something new, or it could just have been that these new people found my blog, read that day’s entry, thought “that was a bit rubbish, but I’ll come back again tomorrow and see if he produces anything better,” which they did, only to find that blog post was also rubbish and so eventually gave up after a few tries. If only they’d stuck it out a bit longer, then they’d have got to hear me saying good morning to people in the street at 3 in the afternoon, and ruminating about killing and cooking cats. It is clearly their loss.

But it does generally seem that visitors do pick up when I’m gigging. Obviously this is partly caused by people seeing us performing and then searching for “David Eagle blind” or “David Eagle autistic.” Maybe I’ll try and deliberately engineer people’s curiosity in order to bring more people to my site. I could, for instance, speak with different accents during the gig, causing people to Google me in order to find out where I’m from. Or could hobble around the stage, leading people to search for “David Eagle leg” or “David Eagle limp.” Actually, maybe that’s not such a good idea, as I’d rather people didn’t type “David Eagle limp” into Google, as it will probably take you to a rather humiliating revenge porn video of me that an ex put up. In my defence, I was very tired and under the weather.

I really don’t understand the concept of revenge porn. I think that if I put a video of me having sex with someone on the Internet, surely I’d just be humiliating myself just as much as the other person. Unless you’re really confident in your sexual ability and truly feel that this video will paint you in a good light, then it’s a bit of a risk to put it out there. Before I could publish the video on the Internet, I’d have to sit down with someone and get them to watch it with me first, and I’d have to ask them to give me an audio description of what was happening, and ask them to be really honest about whether I’d be massively humiliating myself by posting this.

“And be honest, do I look big in this.”

“No, sadly not, not at all. And I’m not sure about the part when you shouted, “the eagle has landed,” I think that just makes you come across as a really big prick, which is ironic considering …”

I’m pretty good at audio editing. So if it was audio revenge porn then I’d be confident about being able to make it more flattering towards me. I could extend and loop certain sections to make it seem like the event had lasted a lot longer than it did. I could probably take her very occasional noises or statements of encouragement and paste them into the audio at various intervals, to make her sound as if she’s enjoying it a lot more. I could also overdub some bits after the event, so that I said things like, “Could you handle another hour of this?” and “OK, so that’s what I can make you feel without moving, now I’m going to start moving.” But when it comes to video, I couldn’t do any of these clever editing tricks, and so it would be massively humiliating for me if I released a video. So don’t worry, your secret is safe, Michael. Having said that, if CD and gig sales are flagging then we might be forced to release it in order to boost interest in the band and get the sales picking up again. Sometimes my jokes make me feel a bit physically sick; that was one of those times.

I wonder if anyone finds this blog by typing in “blind porn,” “David Eagle porn,” or maybe even just “eagle porn,” which is something very different. Sorry to have wasted your time if you clicked on this website hoping to see some hot sexy bird-based action. Keep popping back from time-to-time though, as you never know.

Download audio version here

After yesterday’s social experiment, in which I walked down the street at 3pm and said “good morning” to people, to see if they would unquestioningly say good morning back, I have been thinking about ways of developing this fascinating social study. Some ppeople would be happy to stick with the tried and tested format which has clearly been a massive success with the audience (I don’t want to brag, but I got 3 Facebook likes for yesterday’s Dollop) but I am not the kind of person who sees that sort of success and then becomes afraid to change and develop things, getting stuck in a rut; I am constantly reinventing myself and evolving. Who knows, the next time I do this new and improved version of the Good Morning game, I might even get four Facebook likes, or, maybe even five! I don’t want to get too carried away, still, I suppose it’s important to aim high and dream big.

“So yesterday’s results indicated that out of everyone who spoke to me in the street, all of them said “good morning” back. Oops, sorry, maybe I should have issued a spoiler alert for those people who hadn’t got around to listening yet, perhaps saving that particular episode for a special occasion; maybe you were planning on having a David’s Daily Digital Dollop party and inviting all your friends to join in the fun with you.

I think that next time I play the game, I should push things even further. The first part will be the same. I will go out onto the street at about 3 in the afternoon, and say good morning to people. Then, when someone says “good morning” back, I will ask them for the time, and then, once the time is given, thank the person and say “good morning” to them again, and see if they still respond with “good morning.” I think this will be both entertaining and a worthwhile social experiment. I would imagine that some people will still say “good morning” the second time, perhaps just out of politeness or maybe simply as an automatic, unthinking response. Perhaps I could then put my findings from this research to a psychologist and we could discuss them on the Dollop. When I first set up David’s Daily digital Dollop, it was very much with the Reithian philosophy in mind, of entertaining, informing and educating. And I’m sure that if you are a regular Dollop reader/listener then you’ll agree that you’ve all learnt some valuable lessons over the last 4 and a half months, even if what you’ve learnt is simply how much of your life you’ve wasted listening to and reading all these hours worth of Dollops; although I think some of you might have suddenly had that collective realisation yesterday – three Facebook likes indeed.

When I was talking to my housemate Ben about yesterday’s social experiment, he reminded me of something that happened when we were both at university together. We were on a walk, and there were lots of cyclists on our route. Every time a cyclist drew level with me, I would wait about a quarter of a second until they were just passing me, and then shout, “excuse me, do you have the time?” Most of the cyclists would look round, surprised. Some would give an apologetic shrug, and others would scowl at me. But quite a few of them actually tried to glance at their watches and shout back. Looking back now, I suppose it was a bit of a reckless thing to do, given that it could have caused a cyclist to have an accident, as they had to look back over their shoulder and then glance at their watch before shouting the time back at us. This is why I was surprised by the amount of cyclists who actually managed to do this.

Ben was trying not to let his amusement show, and kept hiding his face, brimming with tears of laughter at the sight of the suddenly startled cyclists. But then, one time I did it and a man looked back over his shoulder, completely surprised to hear a voice from behind him, and nearly toppled off his bike. Ben involuntarily burst into loud laughter and fell to the ground and began helplessly rolling around in hysterics. Ben’s reaction caused me to also start laughing really loudly. The cyclist threw his bike down and came running towards us, shouting and swearing, and saying that he was going to kill us. Ben, sensing the danger, tried to get up off the ground, grab me and make a run to safety. But he was laughing too hard to manage the getting-up-and-running part, although he did succeed in grabbing me, which caused me to fall to the ground, and we both promptly began to roll to safety, down the hill and into some bushes.

We both lay there while the psycho cyclist yelled that he would find us and sort us out. Fortunately, the man must have eventually got back on his bike, because the shouting stopped, and we deemed it safe to crawl out of the bushes.

Hopefully the man doesn’t find this Dollop and decide to come after me, because it would be very easy for him to find me, given that my gigs with The Young’uns are advertised very publicly all over the Internet, plus I broadcast what I’m doing every day in this blog. If the man does still feel angry about that episode and wants to get his revenge on me, then it would be simple for him to strike. If he was able to be a little patient and wasn’t in a big hurry to get his revenge, then he could simply wait until I was in his local area and strike then, saving him the need to even travel. I mean, he’s waited for twelve years, so what does another few months matter?

Please, if you care about me at all, then make sure you don’t mention this Dollop to anyone you know who is a cyclist, especially if they were likely to have been cycling around the Scarborough area in 2004. Thank you.

So, providing that I’ve not been killed by a psycho cyclist, (or by anyone else who wanted to kill me and decided that now was the perfect time to do so, given that they’d likely get away with it because all the suspicion would be focused on cyclists in Scarborough) I’ll be back tomorrow.

After the “success” of Friday’s walking audio Dollop, it’s time for you to once again come with me on another audio walking adventure, as I take you down the mean streets of Sheffield. During our journey I tell you a story about an odd experience with a taxi driver, and I conduct a social experiment with members of the public.

Download it here

Download the audio version here

Today I accidentally knelt on my phone and severely cracked the screen. I was surprised to note how calm and unbothered I was, baring in mind that bits of the screen were starting to flake and fall off. I merely brushed them onto my desk and put them in the bin, before coolly returning to my phone to inspect what was left of my screen. I was surprised by my level of Zen-like collectedness and coolness. Perhaps it’s the therapeutic influence of all those cats on Saturday. If so, then it was well worth the £5 and the salad stealing. Maybe we could drag Trump to the cafe for a day and see if it can sort him out a bit.

Apple have tested the Iphones for durability by doing tests that involve dropping them from a variety of heights, and there are bold statements that brag about their resilience, seemingly supported by videos with titles such as, “An Apple iPhone survives the ultimate drop test, plummeting 9300 feet out of a plane.” There are loads of these videos: people encasing their phones in ice, people dropping their phones from the top of really tall buildings, and even one where the phone is dropped from space. I suppose the idea is that if the phone can survive a drop of over 9000 feet, then it can survive anything. However, this is far from the truth. Granted, if you are the kind of person who is clumsy enough to drop your phone from 9000 feet, then it’s reassuring to know that Apple has you covered; but if you’re the kind of reckless buffoon who does something really stupid like kneeling on their phone for half a second, then I’m afraid you won’t be so lucky. I think I might join the geeky tech reviewers, and set up my own YouTube channel reviewing phones, only I will focus on putting the phones through their paces when it comes to being knelt on for half a second. I accept that it won’t be as exciting and dramatic as dropping a phone from a plane, but I would argue that it is more practical, and that more people are likely to briefly kneel on their phone than drop it from 9000 feet, or accidentally freeze it in ice for a week. I think Apple could do with sorting out their priorities a bit.

In Dollop 95, I mentioned that I’d done an interview with the Big Issue about The Young’uns. That article has been released today, as I discovered due to a tweet which declared that they had an interview with Dave Eagles from The Young’uns. I cannot understand how they’ve managed to get my name wrong. I emailed the answers back to them via david@davideagle.co.uk. I have a signature at the bottom of my email that includes my name, David Eagle, my website, davideagle.co.uk, and my Twitter name, @thedavideagle. Also, at the very top of the document I sent them, in bold letters, it said, “answers by David Eagle, The Young’uns.” Even after all those clues, if you still weren’t entirely sure, a second’s-worth of Googling would soon tell you that I am called David Eagle. So how and why have they abbreviated my first name and pluralised my surname?

On my first day at my office job, about six years ago now, I was given my own email address. Great, I am officially part of the team, I thought. Except, my email address started with, david.eagles. I immediately notified the person who had created my email account, but she didn’t seem bothered about changing it, and so I was just stuck with it. At first, whenever people referred to me as David Eagles, I would correct them. But I communicated with so many different departments and people from different organisations, that it became too time consuming and tedious to keep putting them right. Also, it was getting people confused. I was getting phone calls from people complaining that I hadn’t replied to their email, and then I’d discover that the reason was because they’d emailed david.eagle instead of david.eagles. I mentioned it to my managers several times, but nothing ever got done about it, so in the end I decided that it would be a lot easier if I would just change my name to David Eagles. So while I was at work, I was David Eagles. I mean, this job had already managed to rob me of my dreams and my sense of optimism and hope, so they might as well rob me of my identity too.

Another thing that the editor at the Big Issue has somehow managed to do is get the name of our podcast wrong. It is down as The Young’s Podcast. You’d have thought that the most cursory of reads would have highlighted this mistake; given that the name of our band is The Young’uns, it’s unlikely that we’d call our podcast The Young’s Podcast. I don’t know how they’ve managed to make this mistake, given that I wrote the answers. The answers were typed up by me, and so all they had to do was leave what I’d written in tact and it would all be accurate. I’ve checked the email I sent them, and this is what I wrote: “listen to our podcast, The Young’uns Podcast. I’m sure you can work out how to find it. You seem like a clever bunch.” But for some reason, this is how the published article reads: “listen to our podcast, The Young’s Podcast. I’m sure you can work out how to find it. You seem like a clever bunch.”

Well, they’ll have to be even cleverer now, as they’ll have to deduce that this information is incorrect. If you type the Young’s Podcast in Google then you are unlikely to find it. You get Jimmy Young’s Podcast, the Young Entrepreneur Podcast, Kirsty Young’s Desert Island Discs podcast, Young Lion’s Dancehall Reggae Bashment (DRB) podcast, Tim Young’s Contrast podcast, etc etc. If you do type Young’s Podcast into Google, we’re not even in the first 100 search results, and then I gave up after that.

All I can assume is that they’ve put it through a spellchecker and it’s corrected the name. So all they have done by spellchecking, is make the article less accurate and misspelt. I’d already spellchecked it, and it was all fine. I have employed Jools as my secretary (A lovely in-joke there for the old time dollop fans).

There may be people reading that article who’ll assume that it was me who made that stupid mistake, and they might then jump to the conclusion that, if I’m stupid enough not to be able to spell my own band properly, then it was probably me who also wrote my own name wrong. Well, I’m putting the record straight here: it’s all the Big Issue’s doing, not mine. I think you should all boycott the Big Issue and refuse to support any of the homeless people who sell it, until I am given a written apology, and it better be spellchecked properly. Perhaps when they see the devastation and hardship they have caused among the homeless community, they will come to realise their wrong-doing, and address their failings. If a few homeless people have to die in the process, then so be it. It is a small price to pay for ensuring long-term editorial integrity.

P.S. That was David eagles who wrote that last bit, whereas David eagle would not encourage any such thing, so if you found that last bit offensive, address your comments to David.eagles@theyoung’s.co.uk.

You can read the article here.

Downloadthe audio version here

The Kitty cafe was enjoyable, although probably as a one-off experience. Disappointingly though, there were no cats zooming around in wheelchairs. The house rules didn’t do much to make the human diners feel welcome. The first line of the rules basically told us that we should remember that we have entered the cats’ home, and that we should be mindful and respectful of that at all times. We were also informed that the cats weren’t there purely for our amusement. We then got a list of things that we weren’t allowed to do: no picking up the cats, no pulling the cat’s tail, don’t push the cats off chairs, don’t prod or poke the cats. I was starting to think that this would be no fun at all. I mean, I’d come all this way, and I wasn’t even allowed to pull the cats’ tails or knock them off chairs? We were also told not to feed the cats, yet there was a sentence later on which informed us that our food was our own responsibility, and if the cat’s jumped on our table and snaffled anything, then that was our own look-out.

We were then charged £5 upon entrance, which was simply a fee to sit in the cafe, and didn’t cover the price of food. When I first entered the cafe, I didn’t begrudge this £5 charge – after all, wheelchairs for cats can’t be cheep – but the fact that there wasn’t a wheelchair-bound cat present made me feel a bit cheated out of my money. Perhaps if I’d paid a bit extra they’d have let me pull a tail or two or knock a few cats off some chairs. If you do go to the Kitty Cafe, it might be worth enquiring. Also you might want to check in advance of going whether they’ve actually got any feline wheelchair users currently in their care.

When we arrived at our table, there was a cat lying on the chair at our table which I was meant to sit on. I knew that it was frowned upon to knock the cat off the chair, so I considered that I might be standing and eating, while the cat sat on my chair, and probably stole my food. But then I realised that there was nothing in the rules about not sitting on the cats. I remembered that the rules had stipulated no prodding or poking, and so, not wanting to break the rules, I made sure that there were no sharp objects in my back pockets that could potentially come into contact with the cat, thus causing it to be poked, and then I sat down. The cat quickly vacated my chair. David Eagle one, cat nil.

I met all the stars from yesterday’s Dollop: toffee, muffin, marmalade, pumpkin. I thought about trying to get a photo for the Dollop of the four cats standing around me, or perhaps I could have the cats lying on the table, while I held a knife and fork poised over them, as if I was about to eat them. But I couldn’t think of a way of getting all four of them in this pose, without breaking several of the Kitty Cafe’s house rules.

I managed to eat most of my food, before a cat bounced onto my table and ate the rest of my salad. I only got into trouble once from a member of Kitty Cafe staff, as I forgot about their “no stroking with your mouth full” rule. Ruth got into trouble for leaving the table before the cat had finished her meal, which apparently was terrible manners.

We overheard a bit of a spat between one of the diners and a member of Kitty Cafe staff. The man must have yanked one of the cat’s tails, because the waiter bounded over and said, “get your coat, you’ve pulled.” Unless the man had actually been propositioned by one of the cats, and the poor bloke, in spite of his complete sexual disinterest in cats, was forced to go upstairs to the cats boudoir and make love to it, which may have been one of the rules written in the small print section. I would have asked, but I didn’t want Ruth thinking that I was interested in having sex with cats, so I remained silent on the subject. I can always go back another time.

So, if you don’t mind sharing your food with a load of cats, and being treated as a second class species, where cats rule the roost, then the Kitty cafe is the place for you.

No, I am being a little facetious here, it was actually quite fun, principally due to its novelty value, and the staff were very hospitable. Although, I have to say that, otherwise I’ll be breaking one of the Kitty Cafe tenets which stipulates that anyone who speaks ill of the Kitty Cafe shall be hunted down and set upon by a pack of ferocious cats.

You can visit the Kitty Cafe’s website here.

Another audio only Dollop (have I learnt nothing?) only this time I actually do manage to get around to talking about the Kitty Cafe.

Download it here

Today’s Dollop is an experimental (with emphasis on the mental) 3 dimensional audio Dollop.

Download it here

Download the audio version here

While browsing Twitter today, I noticed that a few people were tweeting with the hashtag, RemoveALetterSpoilABook. I don’t know where this hashtag came from, but nevertheless, it set my mind thinking, and here are some ideas of books that would have a very different feel if just one letter was removed from its title.

The Holy Bile

A heavily abridged version of the Holy Bible, edited to only include those passages that reference bodily discharge in some way. Here are a few example passages. These are genuine biblical quotes.

“Ehud reached with his left hand, took the sword from his right thigh, and thrust it into his belly. And the hilt also went in after the blade, and the fat closed over the blade, for he did not pull the sword out of his belly; and the dung came out.”

“Onan knew that the offspring would not be his; so when he went in to his brother’s wife, he wasted his seed on the ground in order not to give offspring to his brother. But what he did was displeasing in the sight of the LORD; so He took his life also.”

“Yet she increased her prostitution, remembering the days of her youth when she engaged in prostitution in the land of Egypt. She lusted after their genitals – as large as those of donkeys, and their seminal emission was as strong as that of stallions.”

““When a woman has a discharge, and the discharge in her body is blood, she shall be in her menstrual impurity for seven days, and whoever touches her shall be unclean until the evening.”

“’If there is a man who lies with a menstruous woman and uncovers her nakedness, he has laid bare her flow, and she has exposed the flow of her blood; thus both of them shall be cut off from among their people.”

These are passages that you probably won’t come across too often if you go to church, as it’s not the kind of subject that a vicar would want to do their Sunday sermon on, just before he and his congregation head home for a lovely Sunday roast. But this book is the ideal gift for anyone who loves reading about blood, gore and shit, but wouldn’t read the bible because they hate all that boring stuff about being nice to one another.

The Da Vinci Cod

While away on business, the controversial and widely contested fish communicator, Turbot Lingdon, receives an urgent late-night phone call. Ling ling, ling ling, goes his phone; it’s Mr Lingdon’s idea of a hilarious joke. But this phone call is certainly no joke, for his good friend, dilettante fish communicator and owner of one of the world’s largest fisheries, has been murdered.

A couple of days later, Mr Lingdon receives a letter, written to him by his recently murdered friend, which predicts his own murder and outlines the reason for it. Accompanying the letter is a computer disc which features a series of fish communication recordings. Mr Lingdon and his friend claim to be able to interpret what fish are saying by analysing the pattern of their swim. The letter had intimated that he was receiving some highly interesting messages from the fish, in particular the cod, yet he had been unable to fully understand what they meant. But recently he had been sent a death threat that warned him that, unless he stopped meddling in things he didn’t understand, and quit his job at the fishery, he would be killed.

After days of painstakingly analysing the fish messages on the disc, Mr Lingdon finally uncovered that the messages were spelling out the name’s of paintings by Da Vinci. After weeks spent Consulting these paintings, and constantly rereading the fish messages, he begins to slowly decipher hidden clues within the paintings, which seem to be referring to the location of a vastly important religious relic, hidden for centuries. But he needs more information from the fish. The person who murdered his friend must have discovered what he was doing and therefore killed him in an attempt to keep the location of this ancient artefact hidden, or possibly to discover it for himself first.

So, under the cover of darkness, Lingdon breaks into the fishery, in order to have a clandestine conversation with the fish. But Mr Lingdon is not alone. He reels in horror at the sight before him: hundreds of fish are being tortured by a man, who is shrieking at the fish to swim and to reveal their secrets about the hidden relic. But the fish, despite their interrogation, are refusing to comply. One of the fish, a cod, is being slowly cooked by the evil man. The fish is still alive , but his seconds are numbered. The man has a pike fish in a tank and he is screaming at it to reveal where the location is, or his friend will be cooked to death. But the tortured cod being cooked in the pan begins to swim an impassioned, defiant swim, and when the man looks around, he is horrified to see that the cod’s dying words to his fish friend are, “don’t tell him pike.”

What will happen? Who will uncover the ancient religious relic first? And how many fish will die in the process? Find out by reading, the epic, Da Vinci Cod.

My other offering is, The Lion The itch and The Wardrobe, but if I start going off on a long ramble about what that could consist of, then I’ll never get anything done today.

Download the audio version

I’ve spent the day looking for some samples and songs I need for The Young’uns In The Mix. I knew I had them on a CD somewhere, which I was convinced would be housed in the shoe box full of old CDs that resided underneath my bed. So I got the old shoe box out and began to search through the cDs. Hours later, and I still haven’t finished my rifle through the shoe box, because I got distracted by the contents of each CD.

On one of the CDs was a load of diary entries from when I was at University. Even though these were personal diaries, I still wrote them in proper sentences, and used some rather flowery language and big words at times. I also included jokes and even gave each entry a title. I’ve wasted an entire day looking through these old entries, and as it’s getting late and I’ve still not finished today’s Dollop or done anything else, I thought I’d share one of the entries with you.

7th April 2006. When The Chips Are down

We went out this evening. We started in Wetherspoons. We all wanted food and so were intending to take advantage of Wetherspoons’ beer and burger deal for £3,99, which as well as comprising a beer and a burger, also comes with chips. However, not today, because they had ran out of chips! So we attempted to haggle with the man at the bar and asked if he would supplement the chips for onion rings, but he refused to acquiesce. Perhaps we should have punished this man’s unjust intractability by going elsewhere, but we’d already bought drinks and were very hungry, and so, despite our collective disinclination, we paid an additional sixty pence on top of the £3,99 in order to get onion rings. So Wetherspoons were well up on the deal, given that they’d got more money out of us and didn’t have to provide chips. And to add salt to our wounds, the obstinate barman will probably get rewarded for his unscrupulousness. His seniors will likely see this as a job well done.

But there was further insult to be added to injury. When our meals arrived, we had each been given a mere three and a half tiny onion rings. This was hardly a worthy substitute for a portion of chips. This meant that one onion ring cost about 18 pence. And a half?! A bloody half?! They actually had the cheek to snap the fourth onion ring in half. Tick tick woof woof, I hear the sound of watchdog!

After our night out, we were feeling hungry, due to our miserly meal earlier. While many of the less street-smart students were no doubt concluding their nights out with a takeaway, we craftily took advantage of the newly opened casino deal, where, in a bid to seduce you into gambling, they furnish you with complimentary sandwiches and chips. As long as you don’t actually gamble, but look as if you might gamble at any minute now, then a plentiful prevision of sandwiches and chips will be yours, for free. And all you have to do to avail yourself of this deal, is to be a member. And it costs nothing to become a member. So it’s completely free. But, you can get even more food for free out of the casino, as long as you are shrewd. If you order sandwiches and chips together, then you get just that, but if you order sandwiches first, and then once they have arrived, get chips, you get crisps with the sandwiches as well. Sandwiches, crisps, and chips! All for free!

Sadly, it seems as if this isn’t a very good week for chips, as the casino had also run out. We considered asking for onion rings as a substitute, but we thought it might be prudent to avoid bringing too much attention to us, lest they cotton onto our scam.

There was a group of girls on the next table who got chatting to us. I think they were impressed by our rebellious ways, noting how one of us would periodically sidle over to one of the machines, pretend to gamble for a minute and then come back, protesting loudly about how the casino had won again and taken more of our money, and saying things like, “Oh well, I guess there’s no such thing as a free lunch.” This was designed to convince the casino staff that we kept coming back here time and time again, and keep getting seduced by the free food into gambling and losing. This meant that we’d be heartily welcomed back next time.

A few of my friends were getting on really well with some of the girls, and a number of them left together. It was now just me and my flatmate, who is in a relationship, sitting at the table. Everyone else had left with the girls. I might have gone into a deep brooding depression that, yet again, I had been completely ignored and dismissed by the girls, while my friends had been successful. I might have felt sad, unattractive and lonely, were it not for the fact that they had all, in their haste to leave and have sex with each other, left most of their sandwiches on their plates, the idiots. I ate my way through them, imagining how pissed off and jealous my friends will be when I tell them about all the free sandwiches I ate last night, which they could have enjoyed if they hadn’t been so foolish as to leave with those girls. How they will rue their reckless decision. And so, I left the casino, in the knowledge that, in the great game of life, I am clearly a winner!

Baring in mind that this is a diary entry, I am very much writing as if to someone else, as if I have an audience. After all, why did I bother to explain the whole casino scam in great detail, given that I’d already knew about it, because I was the person writing about it? Perhaps a subconscious psychic part of me knew that one day I’d be embroiled in a challenge to write a blog everyday for a year, and that some days I’d be stuck for ideas or waste the day looking for things on old CDs, and so I wrote the diary entries as if I was addressing an audience, so that I could paste it straight into my blog years later. Well done me. I’m sure that I also had the foresight to realise that failing with those girls would be funnier than if I succeeded, and so deliberately sabotaged my success with them. It is a little bit disconcerting to note that, just like in these Dollops, I spent quite a lot of my diary making jokes about being unpopular with women. Maybe nothing much has really changed in those years. Maybe I’ll discover other similar subjects cropping up in my diaries that I’ve talked about regularly in these Dollops. Perhaps I wrote an entry about kettles. I’ll keep you posted as I continue reading.

I also like the pertinance of this diary entry’s title: When the chips are down. It works on a number of levels. Wetherspoons doesn’t have any chips, and neither does the casino. Also there is the subject of gambling, which gives another meaning to the word chips. And then there is the fact that I fail to get with any of the girls, and so the chips are down in that respect too. I’m amazed at how much thought went into these diary entries, baring in mind that they weren’t intended for anyone else to read. I probably put more effort into writing them than I do these Dollops. Maybe from now on I should simply release a university diary entry for these daily Dollops. Anyway, I hope you enjoyed this excursion into my uni years