Welcome to a cloudy but rain free South Manchester. The heat of last week has almost gone but there is still a little left to make it a reasonably pleasant day. Sadly, the garden furniture will have to be put away later today in preparation for more autumnal weather as we descend inexorably towards my least favourite season, winter. 

I’m not too bothered really; I get a final taste of summer next week in Sicily.

Shall we answer some silly questions from Sunday Stealing? 

1. What is your favourite book?

I don’t really have a Favourite book, if I’m honest. There are several novels that I have really enjoyed (and that I have mentioned previously on this blog) but there isn’t one that sticks out as my number one.

Maybe when I have written my own novel, I will elevate that to be my favourite book.

2. Are you afraid of the dark?

I used to be afraid of the dark as a kid, but only when I had watched a horror film or read a horror story. It was a transient thing and the longest I had the fear was when I saw The Exorcist – which made me sleep with a small light on for two or three days. I was 19 years old at the time too – what an idiot I was.

More recently I watched two films that reminded me of that feeling. The first was Paranormal Activity which really spooked me – but I was fine when I went to bed. The second was a Spanish horror movie called REC, which I watched alone in the house on a Saturday night at 9pm in winter (Mrs PM was away visiting her mum) with all the lights out - to try to get into the atmosphere of the film. That did make me a little spooked as you might expect so I switched the light on when it had finished. Thankfully I was fine. 

3. Are you mean?

Ah – is this “mean” as in unpleasant or “mean” as in tight-fisted? I’ll answer both.

Mean (unpleasant) – I like to think that I am the opposite of mean. I hate it when I upset people, even people that I am not particularly fond of. I am not a “people pleaser” per se, as I will stand my ground even if it pisses people off. And I Love to make people smile or laugh. It makes me feel good when that happens.

Mean (tight-fisted) – Definitely not. I have found that some people who are quite wealthy are quite miserly, their mantra being “there’s a reason why I am wealthy – I don’t spend my money!”. The way I see it, certainly at my age, you can’t take it with you when you shuffle off this mortal coil, so why not enjoy it? That doesn’t mean that I will just blow it all like a lunatic without thinking of Mrs or the kids. Nevertheless I am not going to let it sit in a bank when I can spend it on travelling and other fun things. And I will always be one of the first at the bar when I go to the pub, rather than sitting back (like some people I have known).

4. Is cheating ever OK?

Not really. I think if you cheat in an exam, you are fooling and hurting yourself because ultimately it will come back and bite you on the arse.

5. Can you keep white shoes white?

I don’t wear white shoes these days because you can't keep them white. Back in the 1980’s and 1990’s it was quite fashionable to have white trainers (sneakers if you are American) and it was a bugger to keep them clean. I had to buy a white polish of sorts and paint them every so often to try to remove black scuff marks. And it didn’t work. I once had a trendy pair of white shoes in the 1980’s and they were even worse to keep clean, which meant that I only wore them on special occasions. I’m happy with other colours these days.

6. Are you currently bored?

On the contrary. I am very busy at the moment and I don’t have time to be bored. I am very busy at work. We are having the back room, hall and stairs decorated and in preparation I am going through my stuff and trying to be ruthless with it. I am not a hoarder but I do have hoarding tendencies and it is quite difficult. We have had the loft boarded up and made accessible as a storage space so I have been up and down there in recent works, storing my stuff in storage boxes. I have almost finished and it has been fun and cathartic. Mrs PM is happy because there is less clutter in the house and she hasn’t crossed the line telling me what I have to get rid of. In fact, it turns out that she has hoarding tendencies too. “I’m not throwing that away,” she says. “It’s sentimental!” – “Exactly,” I reply. 

I am therefore keeping most of my junk – which isn’t really junk – just sentimental stuff. 

Sorry for the tangent but there is a lot of other stuff to do too – so I am definitely not bored at all. 

7. Would you change your name?

Definitely not. I love the name, Dave. My middle name is George and I used to hate it. Bizarrely I have come to like it in the past few years. My dad’s name was George so it is a kind of reminder of him.

8. Do you like the subway?

I love the subway. 

You get to see a lot of interesting people and it can be fun to just watch them going about their daily business. If I lived in London I would travel everywhere on the Tube.

In London, people tend not to talk to other people. I don’t really know why. This means that when you are travelling alone on the Tube you just see people staring into space or just reading their phones or books.

 In Manchester we have a light railway system called Metrolink and strangers sometimes do speak to each other. 

If you can read the Metrolink map, you will some great Mancunian place names that still make me chuckle, like Crumpsall and Besses o’ th’ Barn. 

9. Who’s the last person you had a deep conversation with?

It was probably Mrs PM and it was probably about the house. 

10. Dumbest lie you’ve ever told?

I tell jokey lies all the time to try to make people laugh. I don’t recall any absolute whoppers or even any stupid ones. Ah – perhaps in my early days as a Roman Catholic. Let me explain.

When you are a Catholic you are supposed to go to church regularly and confess your sins to the priest. I remember when I was forced to do this by peer pressure (mostly from my mum), I would sit and wait for the priest to call me in. 

And then I would lies through my teeth to the man.

“Bless me father for I have sinned. It’s been two weeks since my last confession.” – LIE – it had been at least a month.

“I have broken my sister’s doll.” – LIE – I couldn’t think of anything naughty that I had done.

“I have told lies.” – TRUTH – I’ve been lying since I have been in this confessional box. I always used to make that the last confession because I figured that if I confessed to telling lies then the priest could absolve me of the lies I told when I entered the confessional box.

He would them tell me that as a penance I would have to say the Hail Mary Ten Times and the Our Father ten times. I would say each one once and then go home – and I would never confess the fact that I had not said my penance last time I was there. 

What a naughty boy I was. And so was comedian Dave Allen.