Mr Omneo Blogs…

Sometimes, just sometimes, you hear a phrase that brings back memories and if you’re of a certain age the title of this entry probably brought back a flood of memories for you.  Yes, I’m talking about Soda Stream!

From the conversations I’ve had over the past few weeks you possibly fall into one of two camps.  You either had a Soda Stream or you were friends with someone who had one.

Interestingly, so far, I’ve yet to find someone who had one but everyone seems to have had a friend who did.  Far be it for me to suggest that people were only befriended for their Soda Streams but as a kid I think the only reason I  stayed friends with a classmate was because his mum would always say those magical words when I used to visit his house, Would you boys like a Soda Stream? and off we would rush into the kitchen to make our own individual little bottles of fizzy pop. Read the rest of this entry »

As regular readers will know.  In 2009 I decided to make a New Year Resolution that was different from the one I usually make.  Well, I figured that after 5 years of the same resolution and it not working it was time to move on.  So, for 2009 I decided I would not drink alcohol and, with the exception of a bottle of Becks that someone bought me instead of Becks Blue I managed it.

Now, while I’ve gone through periods of not drinking before, I’ve never gone over 6 months. Usually because I’ve gotten sick and tired of paying pub/club prices for cola, lemonade and fruit juices and there’s only so much of each you can drink in a night.  Nowadays it’s much easier to find alcohol free beers, ciders and wines both in supermarkets, online and even in bars, pubs and clubs.

So, what about after the year was up?  I decided I would not stop drinking alcohol mainly due to the fact that I enjoyed wine and couldn’t imagine never drinking it again.  What I have found is that I very often don’t drink alcohol when I am out and when I do, I drink less than before.  At home I drink fruit juice, cordials or alcohol free beer with Bavaria 0.0% my favourite by a mile.  If I could find it in bars I’d be super happy as it’s so very tasty.  I’ve recently tried their wheat beer and it’s also very refreshing, especially in the recent warm weather we’ve been enjoying.

But back to the wine. My heart sank when I perused Tesco and discovered they still sold Eisberg alcohol free wine, my memories of it from 20 years ago left a lot to be desired but at £2.99 a bottle I thought why not!  that was until I tasted it… there are not enough words in the English language for me to describe how awful it is and even my limited Arabic, French, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish and Japanese can’t assist.  All I can say, politely, about it is the Chardonnay tasted like still cider that had been left in a glass overnight! Read the rest of this entry »

Oh dear, I’ve been very slack in keeping on top of the blog lately.  If you’re a regular visitor here you’ll know this, I go through periods where I blog endlessly and then silence.  No news is goods news my old Gran used to say but the fact of the matter is there is lot’s to blog about but not so much time.  This is partly a problem of my own making as I always feel a blog should be more than a  few words, crudely thrown together to make a sentence with a couple of said sentences joined together higgledy-piggledy to make a paragraph and these aforementioned paragraphs….you get the idea? Read the rest of this entry »

So, blink and you might have missed the end of 2009 and the start of 2010. As we get older I wonder if anyone is still out there planning the party of a life time. It’s easy enough for me to look back on my twenties with a hint of rose tinted spectacles. The partying to excess that ritually has to happen to mark the year end is/was a rite of passage. If you weren’t partying your life away you were a dullard and I partied my life away until a few years ago when I suddenly wondered what it was I was partying for, I’m still trying to figure it out which is probably why I had a very quiet new year.

2009 was the year I decided to go without alcohol. At the stroke of midnight I poured myself a glass of wine, I sat and ate a midnight meal of Sauerbraten and sipped my wine, I finished my glass and poured myself another but within 15 minutes I had a thumping headache…ouch! A Ramon Allones Spanish edition sort of eased the dull thud I had hammering at my temples but not quite. I watched UP and retired to bed… good grief it was only 1.30am… Mr Omneo is growing old…ish…sorta…kinda.

Christmas was quiet, as is always the case.  I was fortunate enough to get a great Gail Brodholt print from William & Cleeve.  Whilst not depicting the right period, it captures my old workplace from 1991 when I was Head Usher at Paul Raymond’s Revue Bar in London’s Soho district.  I used to look out from the window of the bridge that covered the alleyway.  It was quite possibly one of my strangest jobs.  I was employed to watch women strip 6 nights a week, 2 shows a night.  Some might say a dream job, the reality is it was rather boring.  Sure the first day or two was exciting enough but then the sadness crept in.  After a few months it was even sadder when I realised there were people who were regulars, not least a math teacher from Liverpool who saved up and came down every 3 months to watch both shows on a Friday and Saturday night.  I also encountered my old Physics teacher from Glasgow one night, the poor soul, he spent most of the show staring at his feet when he recognised me.

Ahh the stories I could tell from my days at the Revue Bar; I get a little sad when I walk around Soho now and see how…tame… it has become, I wasn’t lucky enough to work in Soho during the truly wild times but even the early 90′s were far more exciting than 2009.  Wonder what 2010 will bring us?

Now that we’re into 2010 there is no time to wonder what the new year will bring, the new year is now, time we all got busy don’t you think?

Look at Mr Omneo getting all multi-lingual, or at least trying, there is a reason I tend not to travel overseas.  When I get to France, I don’t so much speak Franglais as manage to blend English, French and Italian and to the untrained listener you would think I was a native Japanese speaker trying to practise all three after locking myself away in a darkened room with nothing but the BBC website for company

In actual fact, my inability to speak a foreign language is not through lack of trying.  Over the years I’ve invested heavily in books, cassette tapes (remember those?) and compact discs in an attempt to learn French, Italian, Japanese, Czech and Arabic.  Strangely I was told my Arabic and Japanese pronunciation was better than my French…go figure!

When I was 19 I went on a mini-adventure that took me to France, Spain, Portugal, Morocco and 1 hellish night and day in Gibraltar.  I returned to the UK with extremely fond memories of Portugal and I’m sure a girl called Virginie from Avignon still has a sliver of what passes as my heart, but that’s another story.  I ended my trip with a six week stint in Paris, or more accurately a suburb called Saint Michel sur Orge.  It wasn’t until much later I realised just how far away from the centre of Paris I really was so I left with pretty non-memorable memories.  Paris? I thought, Nothing special, what’s all the fuss about? On the recent Eurostar sponsored day trip I went on my opinion changed a little.  What little of Paris I did see, I saw through different eyes and I made a mental note to return, after all it’s less than 3 hours away from London which is about 2 hours less than a trip to Glasgow (my home town), another city where the natives speak a foreign language

Paris got bumped up my must visit list when I discovered a new website called Le Nouveau Paris which is a dream come true for a lazy planner like me.  Quite simply it’s a selection of over 250 venues: museums , monuments, unusual places and more than 700 events per year: festivals, concerts and exhibitions.  It also has a series of guides and routes to help you discover Paris according to your interests.  I love the personal folder option.  As you browse the site and see places you like you can add them to your folder so you don’t forget them and then create your own personalised itinerary.  The site also encourages your language enhancement, although I signed up in English, some of the emails and on site messages are in French.  No problemo for Mr Omneo and his vast collection of dictionaries

The Comité Régional du Tourisme of Paris Ile-de-France asked a selection of bloggers to conjure up their vision of that New Paris and to stop us going crazy set an imaginary budget of €1,000.  Now, I could probably spend that all by myself having dinner but they want it stretched out a bit further than the 20 meals I’d have in honour of Mr Jorrocks!  So using their site I planned a weekend break for myself and my imaginary partner where we’d spend our imaginary €1,000. Read the rest of this entry »