Rich has just uploaded a selection of new photos to the web showing some of the stuff he's been up to lately!

He has uploaded three new albums. The first two albums each, in turn, show two recent capers which have seen Rich get up close and personal with some amazing animals - first of all, a recent trip to West Midlands Safari Park... and then a visit to The Parrot Zoo in Lincolnshire, where he spent a day helping one of the keepers dole out food to nearly 2,000 parrots!

Meanwhile, the third album is a mish-mash of other random shenanigans from the last few weeks - including a visit to Nottingham Arena to watch the Premier League darts, and a 'gentleman's grooming experience'...

Without further a do then, the three albums are titled...

1)  ‘Trip to West Midlands Safari Park'

2) 'Parrot-handling experience' at the Parrot Zoo;

3) 'Assorted mischief from the last month or so'

For those of you who don’t bother with the nation’s favourite waste of time – otherwise known as the social networking website Facebook! - this is the first part of a two-part compilation of my ‘status updates’ on Facebook from the last few weeks.

Given that I don’t seem to ever find the time these days to update my blog here on www.softbulletin.co.uk, this will give those of you who are sufficiently interested in my antics a vague insight into what I’ve been up to lately…

Saturday 7^th February 2009

Rich is marking books and actually enjoying it - as this week, he had his class writing about the life and work of Steve 'The Crocodile Hunter' Irwin! Ripper, mate!

Sunday 8^th February 2009

Rich feels a bit like Hugh Hefner as he saunters around his own house. Beautiful Scandanavian ladies are strewn everywhere!

Monday 9^th February 2009

Rich is sat in the staffroom at work trying to eat his lunch, whilst all around his female colleagues are getting excited about a photo of a bloke with a huge knob.

Tuesday 10^th February 2009

Rich  , for the first time in his life, was quite grateful the other night to Margaret Thatcher - after she heroically saved him from a truly terrible fate...

Wednesday 11^th February 2009

Rich  , as the snow melts, is packing away his thermals and wellies. Apologies to all the ladies who found his 'eligable young farmer' look quite sexual...

Thursday 12^th February 2009

Rich  is hacked off cos he drove all he way across town to go and play football, only to find his match had been cancelled due to the latest few milimetres of snow.

Friday 13^th February 2009

Rich  taught a genius PE lesson today. We couldn't go outside cos of the ice - so we stayed indoors and watched Forest's 198O European Cup triumph on DVD!

Saturday 14^th February 2009

Rich  is currently a fugitive on the run! He is however very proud of his mate Dave, who is doing the live Forest commentary on BBC Radio Nottingham this afternoon!

Sunday 15^th February 2009

Rich  hopes everyone had a happy Valentine's Day! And he hereby wishes to thank a certain soap star for assisting him in carrying out a bit of a charm offensive!

Monday 16^th February 2009

Rich  is loving the fact that it's half-term and he's got a week off! No, he's never accepted money or drugs for sex. However yes, you can have some of his blood...

Tuesday 17^th February 2009

Rich  is set to spend the evening hanging out with legendary former Liverpool goalkeeper Bruce Grobbelaar. Hopefully Rich can avoid having another 'Shilton' moment!

Wednesday 18^th February 2009

Rich  is shitfaced, having successfully smuggled a bottle of vodka into the Brit Awards. He's so drunk that he may actually cry if Elbow win 'Best British Band'...

Thursday 19^th February 2009

Rich  is mooching around London with Charles, his adversary in the bitter Fisher-Fox Buoffant War. Distressingly, he is showing no sign whatsoever of cracking!

Friday 20^th February 2009

Rich  can't believe half-term is nearly over! He's had a cool week though, including a Chinese astrology reading in a bid to sort his life out.

Saturday 21^st February 2009

Rich  is hacked off about the footy, but he does have custody of a Derby fan's prized Derby shirt! Suggestions as to what should be done with it, anyone?

Sunday 22^nd February 2009

Rich  , over time, has woken to face many different consequences of excessive alcohol consumption. But a booking confirmation for Chris de Burgh tickets is a new one!

Monday February 23^rd 2009

Rich  is back at work after his week off, and has invented a new game to play with the kids called 'Hammertime' - inspired by the legendary MC Hammer..!

Tuesday Fenruary 24^th 2009

Rich  is currently at his folks' house, watching his dad being a supreme tosser in the kitchen! Happy Pancake Day, everyone..!

Wednesday February 25^th 2009

Rich loves the randomness of his job. Today, somehow, he ended up demonstrating a variety of catalogue poses for the entertainment of approximately 150 children..!

Friday February 27^th 2009

Rich's little heart is singing, because a) it's the weekend, and b) he's had a beautiful lady smuggle some cheese into the country for him from foreign lands!

Saturday February 28^th 2008

Rich  is sad about the news that legendary Nottingham record shop Selectadisc is closing, a victim of the fact that everyone just downloads music these days...

Sunday March 1^st 2009

Rich  is still buzzing from the gig he went to the other night by ageing goth types The Cure! He don't care if Monday's blue, Tuesday's grey and Wednesday too..!

Monday March 2^nd 2009

Rich is cream-crackered after another hectic and eventful day in the world of class 11. Today saw him and the kids go ice-skating!

Tuesday March 3^rd 2009

Rich  has had the kids in his class interviewing, via email, the holder of the world record for most Jaffa Cakes shoved in gob all in one go!

Wednesday March 4^th 2009

Rich  is all set to celebrate World Book Day by spending a whole day at work dressed as Jareth the Goblin King from 'The Labyrinth'! "Nothing? Nothing? Tra la la..."

Thursday March 5^th 2009

Rich  really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really wants a Nintendo Wii!

Friday March 6^th 2009

Rich  is immensely hacked off - cos some dozy chump has driven into his car and put a dirty great dent in the side, and driven off without owning up to it. Cockwad.

Saturday March 7^th 2009

Rich  is chortling over his recent discovery that a friend of his - who shall remain nameless! - recently partook in sexual congress with someone quite famous!

Sunday March 8^th 2009

Rich  is proud to report that, after a five-month long stand-off, today saw him finally crowned winner of the buoffant war he's been having with his mate Charles!

And so today sees me finally break a silence of over a month on the blogging front.

Yes, this is the first time since mid-February that I’ve found time to sit down, log into www.softbulletin.co.uk, and write a few words about what’s been happening in the world of Rich.

And herein lies a bit of a problem – because quite simply, so many things have happened since my last blog update that it’d be pretty much impossible to bring you all properly up to speed without subjecting you all to an essay of several thousand words!

This has led me to make a bit of a decision about how I’m going to go about blogging from now on. But before I come onto that, let’s quickly skim the surface of what I’ve been up to in recent weeks.

In my professional life on the primary education battleground, things have been as busy and eventful as ever – with recent shenaniagans including taking my class ice skating and getting them to interview the man who holds the Guinness World Record for being able to fit the greatest number Jaffa Cakes in his mouth all in one go!

Outside of work meanwhile, I’ve had friends come over to visit from Denmark, and also made no less than five trips down to London for various reasons - ranging from various England football matches at Wembley Stadium, to attending the Brit Awards!

And most excitingly of all, after several years of struggling to find anyone that’s made my heart skip that little bit faster, recent weeks have also seen me enjoying a blossoming romance with a very lovely girl called Emma - who I first met at the back end of 2008!

So without wanting to sound all smug, all is pretty hunky dory in my little world!

I’ve uploaded photographic evidence of most of my recent capers onto the world wide web.

If you’re reading these ramblings on my blog site at www.softbulletin.co.uk and want to take a look at my snaps, then simply visit the photo section and have a flick through the last few albums.

If, on the other hand, you’re reading this on Facebook – well, simply click here to be redirected to www.softbulletin.co.uk.

Needless to say, I’d love to write a bit more here on my blog all the things that have been going on.

As I said though, it’d end up being an essay!

And really, I guess this is just one of those Catch 22s that those of us with a blogging habit sometimes face. On one hand, you need to be doing vaguely interesting things with your life in order to actually have something to write about.

However, if you busy yourself doing lots of interesting things, you end up not actually having time to write about them!

Which leads me onto something I mentioned earlier – the fact that I’ve decided to change the way I blog from now on.

This decision was largely inspired by a chat I had recently with a friend of mine called John, who has always read my blog regularly since I began doing it back in 2006. During the course of our conversation, the fact that I haven’t done much blogging lately was something we discussed - and John made a comment that gave me a bit of food for thought.

“You’re right Rich,” John said, “you haven’t been writing updates on your blog as regularly as you have done in the past. But, you tend to update your Facebook status pretty much every day – and you’re still kind of like a mini-blog.”

Now at this point, I’m going to offer a bit of an explanation that may smack somewhat of teaching Grandma to suck eggs.

For the benefit though of any of you who don’t ‘do’ social networking websites – well, if you have an account on Facebook, then your profile on the site has a ‘status box’, which gives you about as many characters as you get in a mobile phone text message to write a few words to write about what you’re doing or what you’re thinking at that particular moment in time.

This ‘status’ is then visible to anyone else you know who has an account on Facebook. For example, looking at Facebook right now, two friends of mine who have updated their status in the last few days, who I have picked at random, are Anna and Ste.

At this moment in time as I write these , Anna’s status reads…

“Anna is on her lunch. Sitting in a car park, opposite a skip. Nice.”

Meanwhile, Ste’s status is a bit more oblique. It reads…

"Stephen could tell you, but then he'd have to kill you.”

Now you can update your Facebook status as often as you like. You do actually get some folk who update theirs lots of times throughout the day -  presumably due to them having nothing much better to do!

As for me, I generally tend to try and update my status once a day. And rather than going down the ‘Ste route’ and being all cryptic, I like to try and write something vaguely meaningful - so people at least have a vague idea of what I’m up to.

Anyway, my friend John’s comment that I mentioned a few moments ago inspired me the oither day to go onto my Facebook profile page, and look back on all my status updates over the last few months.

And he’s right – if you read through them in chronological order, it actually does read very much like a mini-blog!

This has led to me deciding that I’m going to give up even trying from now on to update my blog. Instead, I’m going to just keep updating my Facebook status every day – and then, for the benefit of the non-Facebookers among you, I’m going to simply add a complilation every month or so of all my status updates in chronological order.

To kick off on this front, I shall be adding in the next few days a compilation of all my status updates from the last couple of months – which I think offer a fairly accurate and snappy insight into what I’ve been up to and where my head's been at since I last managed to find time to write a proper blog entry.

So then, I'm off to do some cutting and pasting!

Watch this space..!

Rich has just uploaded a selection of new photos to the web - an album entitled ‘Spring half-term 2009 – Brit Awards and, um, Bruce Grobbelaar'.

If you're reading this note on Rich's website, www.softbulletin.co.uk, then simply go to the photo section of the site to view these snaps. If, on the other hand, you're reading this note on Facebook - well, simply click here to be redirected...

A blog entry by Rich Fisher

The other day in my blog, I wrote a few words about what it was like to have a student from Spain come and spend a month living at my house.

One thing I didn’t mention though was a very amusing website that my visitor, Miguel, introduced me to.

Now most of you will almost certainly be familiar already with the online Encyclopaedia otherwise known as Wikipedia – which can be found at www.wikipedia.org

What I HADN’T been aware of though is that some mischievous tinkers have taken it upon themselves to create a spoof Wikipedia site called Uncyclopedia – which is packed to the gills with savagely funny entries for just about anything you can think of.

For instance, my beloved home town of Nottingham has it’s own page – with just one of the sections reading thus...

“Nestled languidly in a former colliery, this charming high-class resort plays host to some of the most dramatic scenery to be found anywhere. Recent changes in local Government policy have had a dramatic effect on the city's population. Generations of deprivation, poor educational achievement, low expectations, poor healthcare, gun crime, poverty, injustice, decades of underfunding, urban decay, social eugenics, bad planning and sheer bloody stupidity within the City's council of Warlocks have all been righted throughout Nottinghamshite, with the introduction of PR men to ensure any bad publicity is removed or challenged post haste. Costing almost half a million pounds PA, these public propaganda machines are still cheaper than actually fixing the problems faced by Europe's biggest Utopia, and a pittance when compared to the 'costs' of certain local councillors.”

You can view ‘Uncyclopedia’ by clicking here. Be warned though, if you do visit the site it’ll be a bit like the first time you discovered YouTube – you’ll end up on there for a good couple of hours..!

A blog entry by Rich Fisher

A few days ago, when I last wrote on my blog, I referred to some photos that I uploaded to the interweb*, showing what I’ve been up to during the first few weeks of 2009.

As I said, it’s been quite an eventful few weeks – not least because, for a four-week period from mid-January to mid-February, I was duty-bound to play the role of ‘host with the most’.

Many of you will know exactly what I am referring to here.

But for those of you who don’t – well, the school where I work recently had a couple of Spanish students spend a month with us as part of their teacher training. And I actually had one of them staying at my house for the entire duration of his stay in Nottingham!

The chap in question was a gentleman called Miguel, from Madrid – who can be seen in some of the aforementioned photos.

Now I’d like to say that I agreed to let Miguel stay at my house purely because I’m a nice person who will offer sanctuary to any waifs and strays.

As it happens though, my prime motivation was actually money!

Yes, funding from the students’ university in Spain meant that a tax-free lump sum of £400 was up for grabs for any staff members at my school who were prepared to offer one of the students food and shelter.

And on this basis, I was very quick to volunteer. After all, I’ve been so bloody skint in recent months that there are few things that I WOULDN’T do for several hundred pounds!

That said, as well as providing a welcome injection of cash, I also thought that having someone from another country come to stay for a while would prove to be an interesting and enlightening experience.

And so it proved.

One thing that was particularly interesting about being a host was something that happened before Miguel even arrived – namely, the reaction from certain colleagues at work when it was revealed that I would be hosting one of the Spanish students.

I’ve always found it interesting what perceptions people have of you – and I couldn’t help but detect a bit of incredulity from certain quarters about whether I had what it would take be a host. There seemed to be a certain degree of “Rich being host? How on earth is someone as haphazard as him going to manage to provide food and shelter for anyone?”

Contrary though to what people might expect, I am actually pretty domesticated on the sly.

And during Miguel’s stay, I quite enjoyed having an opportunity show off this side of who I am - and maybe surprise a few people in the process.

Indeed, the most enjoyable thing for me about having Miguel staying was the fact that it saw me embrace my love of cooking.

Yes, I do love cooking.

However, the twin factors of living on my own and having an incredibly busy life means that I don’t tend to flex my culinary muscles all that often.

More often than not, dinner round mine will be involve chucking a frozen pizza in the oven. Or cheese on toast. Or a trip to the chippy.

Being obligated in my role as host however to provide Miguel with an evening meal every day, I suddenly found myself forced to up my game considerably.

And yes, there were odd nights were it felt like a real drag.

Sometimes after all, when you come home feeling absolutely knackered after a tough day at work, the last thing you want to do is cook.

Generally though, it was great having an excuse to cook up a storm most evenings – and I like to think that I definitely broadened Miguel’s culinary horizons during his stay, by introducing him to all sorts of delights ranging from curry to the traditional English Sunday roast.

And I even entered new territory by having a bash at making some home-made desserts – including avocado and jalapeno-flavoured ice-cream!

Meanwhile, Miguel also introduced me to some Spanish fare. His first night after his arrival saw him knock together a mean Spanish omelette, while he also introduced me to the Spanish custom of drinking red wine mixed with Coke - which actually proved to be a surprisingly agreeable combination!

Sadly, Miguel never got round to making a paella during his stay. Mind you, the fact that I don’t eat meat meant that that was always going to be a bit of a challenge for him.

But anyway, enough talk of food – how did my guest and I get on?

Obviously, this factor was probably the biggest risk in my having agreed to be a host. After all, it was quite possible that I could’ve ended up with someone living in my house who I simply didn’t get on with – something which, obviously, would’ve been incredibly awkward…

Happily, this proved not to be the case.

Okay, so I don’t think Miguel and I are destined to be best mates for life. However, I’d say we got on pretty well – something that was probably helped by a shared love of football!

That said, the standard of football Miguel is accustomed to is worlds apart from that that I tend to watch of a weekend.

Yes, being from Madrid, Miguel unsurprisingly supports Real Madrid – one of the best teams in Europe. Naturally then, I think he was quite bemused by what he saw when I dragged him along on a freezing cold night to go and watch my team, Nottingham Forest, play a match against Sheffield Wednesday.

All in all, thiswas probably a bit like grabbing someone who’s done their food shopping in M&S all their life and taking them to Netto instead to get their groceries!

Still, I did take him for a pre-match pint and then post-match fish and chips from the chippy – and so if nothing else, he can at least claim to having partaken in all the important rituals of the British matchday experience!

Miguel’s stay also happened to coincide with our respective countries playing an international friendly match against each other – with the England team taking on Spain in Seville.

Miguel and I sat and watched the match together on telly – and with Spain the most in-form best football team in the world at the moment, it was no real surprise when they ended up comfortable 2-0 winners.

To his credit, Miguel was gracious in victory – though to be fair, with it only being a friendly match, I wasn’t particularly arsed really about whether England won, drew or lost!

Despite his love of football though, Miguel’s stay did actually disrupt my viewing of Forest!

Yes, with primary schools being incredibly busy places, I’d decided it’d be nice to provide Miguel with an opportunity to spend some time with the staff from my school in a more relaxed, informal setting. And so a few days after his arrival from Spain, I invited all my colleagues over to my house for an evening of food, drink and idle chit-chat.

Now I picked the date for this shindig a few weeks in advance. However, no sooner than had I told everyone, it was announced that, the very same night, Forest would be playing an absolutely massive game - an FA Cup tie against Derby, their closest rivals!

Naturally, this presented me with a bit of a dilemma.

The match was actually being televised live, so I could’ve just had it on on the telly while I had people round. However, with my colleagues being 95% female, I’m not entirely sure most of them would’ve really appreciated being made to sit through an entire match!

In the end, I decided on a suitable compromise. Yes, I would set my SkyPlus box to record the match, avoid all contact with the score… and then watch it ‘as live’ when everyone had gone home!

As it was, I was actually so pissed by the time my last visitor left that I ended up falling to bed, still not knowing the score!

I did however watch the match ‘as live’ when I got up the next morning. Had I known what a turgid 90 minutes it would turn out to be, I probably wouldn’t have bothered. But hey, such is the lot of the die-hard football fan..!

All in all then, I’d say that being a host was a rewarding experience – and not just in monetary terms!

Saying that though, my £400 did actually end up being slashed down to £390!

Yes, Miguel arrived at the beginning of his stay, and departed at the end of his stay, by bus. And as part of my duty as host, I was obligated to pick him up and drop him off on each of these occasions.

Having not perhaps read the ‘small print’ as well as I maybe should’ve done though, one thing I didn’t realise until a few days before the end of Miguel’s stay was that I was going to have to get up at 6am on a Sunday morning to drive him down to the designated drop-off point.

Needless to say, this would’ve been bad enough on ANY Sunday morning – however, this particular Sunday morning happened to be the morning after Valentine’s Day as well!

Needless to say, Miguel very quickly found himself being presented with a crisp ten pound note, and a copy of the Yellow Pages open on the page for local taxi companies…

A small price to pay to preserve the sacred ritual that is the Sunday morning lie-in, methinks..!

* If any of you are reading these ramblings on Facebook, you can click here to be redirected to Rich’s blog – where all the photos that he refers to can be seen…

A blog entry by Rich Fisher

Yesterday, I uploaded a load of photos onto my blog* depicting things that I’ve been up to so far in 2009. And though the new year is still young, I think it’s fair to say that it's already been fairly eventful in the World of Rich.

For starters, work has been busy, as I continue my endeavours on the primary education battleground.

But then to be fair, it usually is!

Away from work meanwhile, my house has also been a hive of activity recently, with various visitors having been over to stay… some just for a few days, and one particular person for a bit longer!

I shall write about those things another time though. Because now, I want to say a few words about the one thing that has dominated recent weeks – something that’s now all just about melted.

Yes, the biggest snowfall we’ve had in Nottingham in six years!

Now generally speaking, winter is by far and away my least favourite time of year. However, snow is something I am very fond of for lots of reasons.

One, I find it deeply amusing how just a few millimetres of snow never fails to cause mass panic and bring the UK to a complete standstill.

Two, I love the fact that a sprinkling of snow can make even the most drab landscape look like a picturesque Christmas card.

And three, I love the fact that a bit of snow is a perfect excuse to break out the good ol’ mulled wine!

But more than anything, snow, when you get enough of it, is simply bloody good fun!

I mean, throwing snowballs, building snowmen, going sledging – what’s not to like?

I’m pleased to report that the first two of these three activities were both something that I partook in during the current deluge of snow, though I didn’t actually build a snowman.

Saying that, I didn’t have to – because someone made one for me!

Yes, the early hours of Thursday 6^th February was one of several occasions during the last few weeks when it snowed during the night in Nottingham.

And that morning, when I stuck my head out of the front door first thing in the morning, I discovered that someone had built a snowman in my front garden – complete with a Nottingham Forest scarf round its neck!

Needless to say, this really made me smile!

And that’s saying quite a lot really - because I’d woken up in a particularly foul mood… owing to the fact that, the previous night, I’d sat and watched Forest lose 3-2 in a match against their arch-rivals, Derby County.

Amusingly, I still don’t actually know who it was who crept up to my house early in the morning and made the snowman!

Naturally, there are a number of people who I suspect may have been behind it – but all of them are denying any knowledge!

I am touched though that someone must have known that I’d be fed up because of the footy result, and decided to do something to cheer me up.

If it was you though and you’re reading this - thank you!

As it happened, Thursday 6^th February proceeded to get better and better – because hot on the heels of discovering the mystery snowman, I discovered that my school was having to close for the day due to the snow.

Now don’t get me wrong, I love my job!

However, no matter how much you love your job, everyone loves an unexpected day off!

And there was only one thing for it – yes, sledging!

Now when we’d had the first snowfall a few days earlier, I’d immediately found myself getting a bit of a bee in my bonnet about wanting to go sledging – something I’ve not done for years.

Not because I haven’t wanted to – but simply because we never seem to get enough snow these days in the UK.

And so it was that I set off on a bit of a mission to try and buy a sledge. Alas though, a good hour-and-a-half spent driving around Nottingham as part of this quest proved a fruitless exercise.

That said, I did come agonisingly close when I popped into a branch of Toys R Us, and spotted a couple of plastic sledges sat tantalisingly across the store.

Alas though, I wasn’t quite quick enough – because just as I began making a beeline for them, someone else got in there first and grabbed both of them… none other than Forest striker Nathan Tyson!

And so it was that I went home empty-handed - and ended up making a bit of a gamble. Yes, I resorted to eBay!

Suffice to say, you could buy pretty much anything on eBay – so getting a sledge was never going to be a problem.

BUT… would my purchase arrive before all the snow melted?

Gloriously, the answer proved to be yes! And after recruiting a fellow sledger in my friend Emily from work, the two of us spent a Thursday afternoon when we would ordinarily have been teaching kids hurtling down the slopes at Nottingham’s beautiful Wollaton Park.

And apart from a slight moment of panic when I lost my phone in the snow, it was a right laugh!

Of course though, snow can outstay its welcome – and I think it did reach that point with the recent deluge.

In my job, for instance, it can play real havoc.

For most of the last couple of weeks, the children at my school weren’t allowed to go outside at all during their playtimes, because it wasn’t safe for them to do so. And when they have to be cooped up inside all day, kids tend to go a bit mad – which makes your job as a teacher hard.

And my weekly game of five-a-side footy ended up getting cancelled last week cos of the snow, which was annoying.

That said, I am glad we’ve had a bit of snow.

Having spent seven quid plus postage on it, I just hope I don’t have to wait another six years before I get to use it again..!

* For the benefit of any of you who are reading these ramblings on Facebook, you can redirect yourself to Rich's blog site by clicking here.

A blog entry by Rich Fisher

Today I’ve been thinking a lot about birthdays – as the next couple months sees quite a few coming up among the important people in my life.

First of all there’s Cat, long-suffering ‘other half’ of my brother Al - whose birthday actually falls on February 14th.

Later on in February meanwhile it’s my mum’s birthday on the 22^nd; while Al himself has his on March 16th.

All in all, I think it’s fair to say that the timing of these three birthdays isn’t exactly ideal!

Well, Cat’s being on February 14^th is pretty cool I suppose.

After all, it means there’s always a lady in my life who I can send a card to on Valentine’s Day – even if, very much like 2009, it’s one of those years where my lovelife is proving to be a total car crash!

That aside though, the early part of the year is usually of course a time when we’re all pretty bereft after the excesses of Christmas – both in terms of decent ideas for presents… and also, perhaps more critically, the cash to buy them!

In view of this, I’m pretty pleased to say that today saw me successfully sort out presents for all three of the aforementioned people.

And I’m pretty pleased with what I’ve got for them too!

Needless to say, I’m not going to spill the beans as to what I’ve got for them, in case any of them are reading this!

However, given that I’ve had birthdays on the brain, it seems timely to write a bit about a website that I’ve become acquainted with recently, that’s well worth a visit if any of you find yourself with any imminent need to buy a card – whether it’s for a birthday or otherwise.

And that’s www.moonpig.com...

You may have already heard of Moonpig, as it’s been quite heavily advertised on TV recently.

If not – well, it’s basically a website where you can actually design your own bespoke greetings card, and then have it printed and sent to you… or sent directly to the intended recipient!

How cool is that?

The price of having a card made with Moonpig surprisingly affordable too. There are all sorts of templates that you can use – for instance, there are loads of ones based on popular magazine or newspaper front covers, where you can change the headlines to be about the person that you’re designing the card for.

I went down this route a couple of months ago when one of my work colleagues left to start a new job as a deputy head teacher at another school.

The colleague in question, Lisa, has a massive love of motorbikes. And  so after a bit of a tinker around Moonpig, below is what I came up with…

Who knows, with the rise of Moonpig, maybe the ‘off the shelf’ greetings card will end up becoming extinct eventually?

Though I hope note, as birthdays would never quite be the same without getting at least one of those generic ‘Happy birthday nephew’ cards with a picture on the front of an angler or a formula one car – which are always touching when you’ve never shown any remote interest in fishing or motor racing..!

A blog entry by Rich Fisher

With a few months having passed now since it was first unveiled, you could be forgiven for thinking that the novelty of having a statue of Brian Clough in the middle of Nottingham might by far have started to wear off.

Happily though, that seems to be far from the case.

As far as I can tell, the statue seems remains very much a focal point of our city centre.

Whenever I walk past the statue, there are always people stopping to admire it or have their photo taken with it – regardless of the time of day.

And with people knowing that I was involved in raising the money for the statue, I rarely seem to go more than a week without people raising the subject – and never more amusingly so than this week, when I received an email from my great pal Romana McCallum.

“We were in town last week,” her email read, “and there was a march taking place to protest against what’s happening in Gaza.

“We walked a bit with the protestors – only it turned out that the march concluded not in Market Square as we expected, but at the Cloughie statue!

“It was so weird -some kids were carrying little coffins, and they started laying them at the foot of the statue. I got a photo on my phone of all the protestors gathered around the statue, and it looks like Cloughie’s leading the protest! Thought you'd appreciate it…”

If you’re reading these ramblings on my blog at www.softbulletin.co.uk, you can see Romana’s picture below.

Needless to say, I’m sure Cloughie himself would have been more than happy at the idea of aiding such a cause – after all, the man always was one to support the causes of life’s downtrodden!

Amusing though as Roman’s snap and email were, the most exciting thing that’s happened lately in relation to the Cloughie statue as far as I’m concerned is the fact that I recently become the owner of my own miniature version of the statue!

As you may or may not be aware, a limited edition of 1,000 of these miniatures - which are made out of stone - went on sale just before Christmas.

Approximately six inches high and mounted on a plinth, they are priced at £100 each, with all profits going to charity.

Now £100 is of course a fair old amount of cash to stump up in these current times of penny-pinching. Happily though, I personally didn’t have to dig deep at all – because as a ‘thank you’ for all our hard work in raising money for the statue, Nottingham City Council presented myself and the other members of the statue with a complimentary miniature each.

It was a nice gesture – and having been presented with my miniature shortly before kick-off prior to Forest’s game against Plymouth Argyle the other week, it meant that myself and the guys that I sit with were able to have ‘mini Cloughie’ join us for the duration of the match!

Again, if you’re reading these ramblings on my blog at www.softbulletin.co.uk, you’ll be able to see a snap of the great man below, surveying his former empire.

And I’d like to think he’d have been pretty pleased with what he saw, as Forest chalked up a comfortable 2-0 win against Plymouth out on the pitch.

Word is that there are less than 100 of the miniatures left available to purchase – so if you’re interested in buying one, you’ll need to move quickly!

You can find out full details by clicking here.

My miniature now stands proudly on my mantelpiece – though given its size, there have been some waggish suggestions that it could also be deployed very effectively as a toilet roll holder..!

A blog entry by Rich Fisher

I must say, I’m not really one to dwell on the past too much. I’m very much a ‘here and now’ sort of person.

However, today has seen me spend a good few hours reminiscing about old times – and it’s all thanks to my great friend Superkev…

For those of you who don’t know him, Kev has been a really close friend of mine ever since we met at uni back in 1998 - a much simpler time of my life, when the world seemed to offer few worries other than where the next bottle of vodka was going to come from!

Of course though, life moves on, and I think my uni pals and I have all grown up quite a lot over the last decade or so.

All of us have responsible jobs. Most of us have mortgages.

And as if those things aren’t scary enough, some of the others have got married - while some of them have even started knocking out kids!

For the record, Kev ticks all four of the aforementioned boxes – with him and his wife Becky having become proud parents last year to a little boy called Oliver.

Though he bears a slightly disconcerting resemblance to the baby that gets kidnapped by David Bowie in the film ‘The Labyrinth’, Olly is absolutely adorable. What’s more, he’s also possibly the only baby on the planet who absolutely loves pickled onions!

Now Kev has decided to start putting together a photo book for Olly - so when he’s a bit older, he can start finding out about his daddy’s life story. And this is what led to my little jaunt today down memory lane…

Kev and I, you see, used to present our own radio show!

Admittedly, this probably sounds far more exciting than it actually was!

Basically, our student union used to have its own radio station called ‘Shout FM’ – and somehow, back in the year 2000, Kev and I ended up spending a few months presenting the breakfast show every Friday!

Going under the banner ‘The Mullet Breakfast’, our show used to basically consist of us talking nonsense and playing music for a couple of hours. The student union had a proper radio studio and stuff, which we presented our show from, and it was all pretty ace for the first few weeks.

We used to have all sorts of daft features like ‘MC Hammer song of the week’ – and I seem to recall a particular ripple of excitement among our listeners when we announced on air one week that Will Smith would be popping into the studio for an exclusive chat.

Of course, we neglected to clarify that the Will Smith in question was actually Kev’s dad – whose name is actually William Smith!

There was also a fringe benefit to being involved in Shout FM, in that the station used to get sent CDs by record companies of pretty much every new album and single that was released.

The idea here was that these all remained in the studio, forming the basis of a library of music for presenters such as Kev and I to have at our disposal. Suffice to say though, being cash-strapped students, Kev and I used to shamelessly help ourselves to anything that took our fancy!

Being a bit of a squirrel, I still actually have a box of cassette tapes somewhere with recordings of all of our shows.

Listening back now, it’s all pretty cringeworthy.

But hey, not many people can say they once had their own radio show!

Sadly though, our enthusiasm for doing the show quickly began to wane – largely because all the other people who worked for the station were a bunch of complete tools.

One of them was a self-important eejit called Phil.

After one show, this hamster-faced wanker actually had a go at me – due to the fact Kev and I had neglected to play a song that had been on the station’s playlist for that particular week… something that he, as the station’s self-styled ‘head of music’, was responsible for drawing up.

Now Kev and I had had good reason for not playing the song in question – namely, the fact that it was ‘Dancing in the Moonlight’ by Toploader, and therefore an unspeakable crock of shit.

Not wanting to put any noses out of joint however, I promised Phil that we’d atone our sins by making sure we definitely featured ‘Dancing in the Moonlight’ on our very next show.

And that we did – yes, the next instalment of ‘The Mullet Breakfast’ featured a sound recording of me microwaving on full power Shout FM’s one copy of ‘Dancing in the Moonlight’!

Ultimately though, the one thing that killed our enthusiasm for doing The Mullet Breakfast, more than anything else, was the fact that no-one really listened to Shout FM. And so our fledgling broadcasting careers came to an end when, one week, we both went out and got really, really pissed the night before we were due to do our show – and drunkenly decided between us that we simply wouldn’t bother turning up the next day!

So that was that really…

All these years later though, the experience of doing my own radio show is one that I look back upon fondly. And evidently, so does Kev – as going back to the book he’s putting together for his son, he rang me the other day to ask if I had any photos from our stint on the airwaves.

This led to me going up to my mum and dad’s house, and digging out a box of several years of my old photographs.

Of course, you embark on this sort of mission thinking that you’ll quickly rifle through and find the snap that you want. Inevitably though, you end up getting completely sidetracked, as you unearth other photos that jog your memory of things that haven’t really thought about in ages.

Holidays that you went on. Ex girlfriends that you used to love. Nights out that you went on. Hairstyles that you’d rather forget!

It’s been quite emotional actually – and a reminder that it can be nice to wallow in a bit of nostalgia every now and again.

The only snag is that the photos that I was looking through were all from an age long before the advent of the digital camera – and so now I’m going to sit and laboriously scan all of the bastards..!

A blog entry by Rich Fisher

As a nation, we’re pretty good here in the UK at certain things.

For instance, despite us being a pretty small place in the grand scheme of things, our fair isles have given the world a disproportionately large amount of amazing pop music.

We’ve also produced some pretty good authors over the years too. And it goes without saying that we’re world-beaters when it comes to complaining about the weather!

On the flipside though, there are also of course a fair few things that, as a nation, we’re generally a bit crap at.

We are, for instance, useless at football penalty shoot-outs.!

But if you have to pick out one thing where we are particularly spectacular in our uselessness, then our lack of proficiency in speaking foreign languages would surely be the runaway winner.

Being a fairly average Brit, I’m just as bad as the next person on this score.

A bit of German, and that’s your lot.

And it’s kind of embarrassing really – particularly when you visit a non-English speaking country and find that most of the locals are able to speak our language flawlessly.

Hopefully though, times are starting to change.

For people of my age, learning languages in school was something that didn’t start happening until we started secondary school. And a lot of people would argue that this was simply too late for us to ever have stood a chance at making a decent fist of learning another tongue.

Today though, more and more children in British schools are starting to learn languages at a much younger age. And this is certainly something that’s happening at the school where I work.

At my school, Spanish has for some time been the preferred foreign language – and efforts are being made to give it a much higher profile in the classroom.

Specifically, myself and most have the other teachers have all begun having Spanish lessons! And the stuff that I’ve learned so far is something that I’ve already started to put into place.

Most days now, for instance, I now register my class in Spanish – which means I get to hear 30 little voices all going “Buenos dias, Senor Fisher!” every morning!

What’s more, we are also going to be having a couple of actual real Spanish people spending some time in our school over the next four weeks!

Both of them are trainee teachers over in Spain - and are coming to our school on placements as part of their course.

Now being a large school, we get students coming in all the time. It’s not that big a deal really.

For me though, the arrival of the Spaniards is quite significant – because one of them will actually be living in my house for the duration of his stay here in Nottingham!

Yes, when the students’ placements were first arranged, myself and my colleagues at the school were offered the opportunity to earn a bit of extra cash, by taking on the role of host.

I duly volunteered – not just for the cash, but also because I thought it would be quite an interesting experience having a random Spanish person living in my house for a month!

And I’m about to find out whether that will indeed prove to be true – because Miguel arrives in just a couple of hours!

Now obviously, I haven’t yet met Miguel. However, we have been communicating with each other by email - and with him being well into both his music and his footy, I’m quietly confident that we’ll get on famously!

In terms of my obligations as Miguel’s host – well, in addition to obviously providing him with a roof over his head, I also have to feed him!

And this will be quite interesting – because unlike me, he’s a fully-fledged meat-eater!

Suffice to say I can’t really expect him to ‘go veggie’ for a month just to fit in with my own dietary whims - and as such I’m going to have to remind myself how to cook meat… something I haven’t done since I gave it up eight years ago.

Still, should be fun!

Another thing that should also be fun is initiating Miguel in the ways of Nottingham.

With wanting to be as good a host as possible, I’m keen to ensure he gets as much as possible out of his stay – and so assuming he’s up for it, I will definitely be making time to show him some of my favourite places.

Now at this point, you could be forgiven for suspecting that the mental list I have in my head will consist pretty much entirely of a list of ‘tourist attractions’ – Sherwood Forest, Nottingham Castle, and so on.

However, that is not really the case.

No, wherever I happen to be in the world, the well-beaten tourist trail is not something I tend to find myself gravitating towards. Because as far as I’m concerned, the best way to get a feel for any place is to simply mooch around – and to experience the places where the locals go.

So here is my list of the ten places that I think epitomise the Nottingham that I know and love – which I may or may not end up dragging my Spanish guest along to at some point over the next month.

And I don’t know what this says about me, but most of them are places that are very much about eating, drinking and being merry..!

1) The City Ground

Home, of course, of the mighty Nottingham Forest. In the emails that Miguel and I have exchanged, he has already expressed interest in going to watch a match. Being a Real Madrid fan though and thus accustomed to watching some of the greatest players in the world, I dread to think what he’ll make of the Reds…

2) The Lincolnshire Poacher

In this increasingly bland world, the Lincolnshire Poacher is a great example of a classic, unspoilt British pub. It’s totally unpretentious, and always full of interesting characters. There’s even a ‘book exchange’ in one of the back rooms, where you can help yourself to a free book providing you promise to bring another one back in exchange next time you come. Oh, and their cheese board is sensational!

3) The Left Lion

Giant stone statue that’s a popular meeting point right in the very middle of Nottingham city centre. I can’t quite put my finger on what’s it is about the Left Lion that’s so magical, but to me it somehow epitomises Nottingham. It’s also a fascinating ‘people watching’ spot. If you’re standing by the Left Lion waiting to meet someone, the chances are that at least two or three other folk will be doing the same. And it’s good fun speculating who each person might be waiting for. A friend for lunch? A first date?

4) Rock City

Music venue that’s played host to gigs by pretty much anyone who’s anyone in the world of music. Nirvana, Oasis, Radiohead, David Bowie… you name them, and they’ve played there. The floor may be sticky and it may be sweatier than Meat Loaf after a ten-mile run - but when it’s rammed and one of your favourite bands are on stage playing a blinding set, there are few better places on earth.

5) The Mogul-e-Azam

Tremendous curry house. As well as providing fab food at decent prices, the Mogul is run by some of the most charming people you could ever wish to meet. But above all of that, the Mogul’s unique selling point is the fact that there’s a high chance of seeing an amusing C-list celeb in there – as it’s a favoured eaterie for people performing at the Theatre Royal, which is just over the road. My own past visits have seen me dining in close proximity to rock band The Magic Numbers, and also the dude who played Joe Mangle in Neighbours! Most random of all though was the time when I got chatting to a bloke dining at an adjoining table who turned out to be the drummer for Girls Aloud’s live band! He was quite a tragic character actually, spending most of the conversation bleating pathetically about the fact that no-one who went to Girls Aloud’s gigs really gave a rat’s ass about whether or not his drumming was actually any cop. Get a grip, mate – personally, I’d be more than happy to be paid good money to stare at five such fine arses for two hours a night..!

6) The Rescue Rooms

Rock City’s baby brother, situated just next door. Like Rock City, ‘the Rooms’ (as it is known to regulars) is a venue to go and see live bands - but it also has a bar where you can simply sit and talk rubbish all night. My favourite thing about the bar is the fact that there are shelves and shelves of really dodgy old vinyl LPs that you are allowed to flip through. Hours of fun..!

7) Ye Olde Trip To Jerusalem

Allegedly the oldest pub in Britain, and absolutely brimming with character – mainly because the majority of the pub is actually a series of interlinked sandstone caves! Always full of real characters too, not least ‘The Fish Man’ – a local legend here in Nottingham, who wanders from pub to pub selling pots of prawns and other such goodies from a basket!

8) Victoria Kebab

Being someone who doesn’t eat meat, it might seem strange that I’ve chosen a kebab shop in my top ten. However, Victoria Kebab does do a ‘veggie’ kebab – and so to meat-eaters and veggies alike, this place is something of a Mecca for anyone seekiug late-night post-beer food. Unlike a lot of kebab shops, where you kebab will simply be shoved into a pitta bread, the dudes at Victoria Kebab make your bread fresh from dough in front of your eyes. I love going here so much that if I ever have a daughter, I’m going to call her Victoria!

9) Cosy Teapot

Brilliant greasy café just down the road from Nottingham’s main railway station, which ticks all the boxes of what you expect in a ‘proper’ café. Yes, that means chipped mugs, squeezy ketchup bottles that are slightly crusty round the top… and best of all, the fact that you can go in there and ask for a coffee and simply get a coffe - as opposed to being offered a twatuccino with a million different permutations! The food also spot on as well – the Cosy Teapot’s doorstep toast in particular s legendary…

10) The Cheese Shop

Tucked away up an alleyway in the middle of Nottingham, this place is a hidden gem. Yes, as the name suggests, it’s a shop. That sells cheese. And cheese only! What’s not to like?!

A blog entry by Rich Fisher

Being someone who’s always had a very well-developed sense of mischief, I’ve always loved a good practical joke.

One of  my very favourite ever pranks took place a few years ago, when I found myself submitting an online application, in my brother Al’s name, to change his name to Ricardo Scimeca – in honour of a particularly rubbish footballer who happened to be playing for Nottingham Forest at the time!

The UK deed poll office actually took this application deadly seriously. Indeed, with me having entered all of Al’s contact details, the first thing he knew about it was when he got a  phone call at work from them, asking for his credit card details so they could take payment to process his name change. Amusingly, they apparently got quite arsey with Al when he he told them he knew nothing about it, and that he must have been victim of a practical joke.

Poor Al seems to be a popular victim for pranks. In another memorable incident, our mate Russ once put a small ad in ‘Loot’ stating simply ‘Dog-sized hamsters for sale’, along with Al’s mobile number!

For about a year afterwards, Al’s voicemail greeting was “Hi, I can’t get the phone, please leave a message. Oh, and if you’re ringing about dog-sized hamsters, I’m afraid to say that the ad. In Loot was left as a joke – and I’m afraid to say that dog-sized hamsters probably don’t exist..”

That said, Al isn’t always the victim!

No, I once also once a key instigator in a prank that saw a friend of a friend answer his phone one day - to find MC Hammer’s manager on the other end of the line!

Yes, a mate and I had happened to stumble upon MC Hammer’s website – as you do! – where we discovered a form that you can fill out and submit to make enquiries about booking the Hammer for a personal appearance!

Sertiously, I’m not making this up!

If you don’t believe me, click here!

These days the Hammer apparently does weddings, bar mitzvahs, supermarket openings… you name it!

Naturally, my mate and I couldn’t resist filling out the form – and having decided that a friend of my mate would be our chosen victim, we duly entered his contact details. And yes, within a few days, this friend duly answered his phone – and promptly found himself speaking to Hammer’s manager, who was keen to speak to him about an enquiry he’d supposedly submitted about potentially wanting to book Hammer to appear at a religious conference he was supposedly organising!

Needless to say, as with Al and the UK Deed Poll office, the friend of a friend was completely bewildered and had no idea what was going on.

Oh how we laughed!

Of course though, when you’re the sort of person that has been known to play practical jokes on people, you have to be prepared to be to take the retribution that will more often than not be dished out.

And at this point in the tale, I would like to introduce a great friend of mine – the lovely Miss Rachel Emily Hardy…

Rach and I have known each other for the best part of a decade – and just over a year ago, I pulled off a humdinger of a practical joke at her expense.

Well, that’s not strictly true. It was not so much a practical joke as a surprise. But nevertheless, it was a surprise that almost made her wee herself with shock!

Now being of a very similar age to myself, Rach, like me, is very much a child of the ‘Britpop generation’.

However, rather than having had her feet firmly planted in either the Blur or Oasis camp, Rach’s big love was, and still is, The Bluetones – a band who are probably best known for their classic jangly pop hit ‘Slight Return’, which reached the giddy heights of number two in the charts way back in 1996.

Rach would like to try and convince the world that her passion for the Bluetones is entirely for musical reasons – however, I can exclusively reveal her interest in the band is far more to do with the fact that she fancies the pants off their singer, Mark Morriss.

And so it was that I suddenly found myself, in September 2007, with an unmissable opportunity.

Basically, I was staying down in Sussex for the weekend at my great friend Andrew ‘Lothario’ Best’s house – and on the Sunday afternoon, we decided to go along and watch a charity football match that was taking place in a village near Andy’s house, starring a variety of minor celebs.

 And you know what’s coming next.

Yes, one of the ‘minor celebs’ was Mark Morriss!

And yes, I duly cornered him, handed him my mobile phone, and got him to phone up Rach to say Hello!

Needless to say, this was a moment Rach had been dreaming of since her teenage years! Inevitably though, far from the sultry seductive temptress she would’ve probably hoped to have come across as, she was so shocked that all she managed was a high-pitched shriek and a groupie-ish “Ooh Mark, I love you!”

Naturally, Rach has been vowing revenge ever since. And while it’s taken her a while it’s taken her a while, I think she may have just managed it!

You see, Rach and me talk quite a lot. And the other week, I happened to be having a bit of a moan to her about the wretched state of my love life.

Now Rach is usually a fantastic listening ear. On this occasion however when I was chatting to her, I made a fatal mistake – by mentioning a story I’d read a few days previously in a national newspaper, about a man who was so romantically inept that his friends set up a Facebook group to try and find him a girlfriend.

“What a loser!” I’d laughed…

Alas though, I am now officially as much of a loser. As Rach duly went away and seized her chance to finally get her own back for the Mark Morriss phone call – and promptly set up a similar group for me!

Oh yes…

With her having always addressed me by the pet name ‘Fishcakes’, Rach has fittingly Christened this group ‘The Search to Find Fishcakes a Girlfriend’!

The page for the group features a brief description of myself and a photo, and Rach is now on a one-woman mission to get as many people as possible to join - the idea being that each member delves into the recesses of their brains, and tries and think of anyone they know who might be well-matched with yours truly.

I can’t quite believe it’s come to this..!

But fair play Rach, you’ve well and truly got me back!

And who knows – if I can put my own humiliation to one side for just one moment over being presented to the world as a desperate loser, we can’t rule out the possibility that Rach’s group may actually bear fruit!

Stranger things have happened.

Alas though, the only real response from the group’s membership so far has been someone saying they have a gay male friend who would be very interested in me having seen my photo – so I’m not exactly holding my breath..!

A blog entry by Rich Fisher

Well, I’m pleased to report that I’ve officially survived my first week back at at work after the Christmas holiday!

And what’s more, having expected it to be a painful experience, I actually really enjoyed it!

It’s not particularly original, but over the week I had my class doing a fair bit of work about New Year’s Resolutions, and thinking about what they want to achieve during 2009.

Naturally, this got me thinking a fair bit about my own hopes and dreams for the coming months. And indeed, 2009 is quite a big year for me in a certain sense – as in October, I’ll be turning 30!

Hitting this milestone itself is not something that particularly bothers me.

But one thing I’m a bit scared by is the fact that my brother Al has got a surprise lined up for me.

Now I have no idea what this surprise is - all I know is that I’ve been told to keep free a particular Saturday in October!

Of course, this could all be entirely innocent.

However, I very much bloody doubt it, because I laid on a bit of a surprise when Al himself turned 30 last year* - and he’s been vowing ever since to wreak spectacular revenge on my 30th!

Watch this space I guess..!

But anyway, other than gritting my teeth and enduring whatever ritual humiliation that Al has planned for me, what are my plans for 2009?

Well my answer to that question is ‘not a lot really’!

A bit boring, I know!

However, it’s what I desperately need, after all the events of the last few years.

As most of you will probably be well aware, the three year period from the start of 2006 to the end of 2008 saw me not only change career, but also travel round the world twice… and spend hours upon hours too helping raise money for a statue of my hero Brian Clough.

Needless to say, this has all been incredibly exhilarating.

But frankly, it’s been exhausting too – and my body, mind and credit cards have all been screaming out for quite some time for a bit of a rest!

Now knowing me, those could of course be famous last words!

Indeed, I seem to remember saying something similar in the run-up to 2008 – only for my mate Ed to suddenly pop up and go “Hey Rich, fancy spending the summer attempting to drive all the way to Mongolia in a really shit car?”!

However, I am going to try really hard to keep head down and embrace the humdrum in 2009.

That said, I have got one challenge on the cards – and now seems as good a time as any to make this public!

Enter my great friend Charles Fox…

Now Charles and I have known each other for over a decade, and we have a lot of things in common. We both like music. We both have a passion for travel. And most tragically of all, we both squandered two years of our precious lives doing a BTEC National Diploma in Media at FE college in the late 1990s.

However, the bond of friendship that Charles and I share is cemented on one thing more than anything else – the fact that we both have Really Shit Hair.

Okay, so let’s keep this in perspective. There are, of course, far worse afflictions that life could have flung at us than having Really Shit Hair.

Like any type of terminal disease.

Or being born in Derby, even!

But nevertheless, Charles and me are both cursed with the sort of barnets that are impossible to tame. If either of us ever let our hair grow for any more than a couple of months, there is only one outcome – an absolutely terrible buoffant.

But what has this got to do with the challenge that I have on the cards?

Well, Charles lives in London these days - and back in October 2008 I went down to visit him there for a couple of days.  

And one night, after we’d quaffed a small lake of wine, we inevitably began drunkenly lamenting our Really Shit Hair!

And in that strange way that you seem to stumble upon the secrets of the world when you’re really really pissed, Charles and I were suddenly struck by a huge epithany.

Ultimately, we decided, the two of us are basically stuck with having Really Shit Hair – like it or not. So instead of moaning about it, why not try and turn a negative into a positive – by embracing it?

To cut a long story short, the night ended up with us shaking hands and agreeing to go head to head in a bouffant war!

Yes, the two of us are both going to see how long we can go without having our hair cut – and see who cracks first!

Nearly three months on, both of us are still hanging on in there. I caught up with Charles over Christmas for the first time since we made our pact - and like me, my buoffant rival is showing no sign whatsoever of breaking just yet!

The two of us even posed for some photographs with us eyeballing each other, in the style of two boxers facing off at a weigh-in - see below..!

Of course, it is still early days yet – the critical period will be when the two of us hit the really awkward ‘frizzy’ period… which I would say is due sometime around March.

Again, watch this space I guess..!

* If you want to see photographic evidence of the surprise I arranged for my brother on his 30^th, just click here.