Sat at the breakfast table this morning, contemplating the day ahead, I found my eyes drawn to the tropical fish tank I have in my kitchen. For a few moments I found myself gazing at the tank and the fish within; the movement of the inhabitants was almost hypnotic and I felt a welcome sense of calm descend upon me (despite the rush around in the morning to get the kids up, breakfasted, dressed, ready for school and ready to leave by 7:30am).

As I have spent many happy moments watching the fish, I thought I’d write about the satisfaction that a fish tank can bring. Even if you’ve never had a tank of your own, maybe you’ve found yourself studying one in a restaurant or in a hotel lobby.

A fish tank is like a television in that, if the lights are on, your eyes are drawn towards it. A TV is often the focal point of a room but equally, if a fish tank is present, you won’t fail to notice it.

A fish tank is fascinating because there is always something going on, particularly if the tank is large and home to a variety of fish. Different fish, different sizes, different colours and different behaviours all make for a community that is delightful to observe (and much more interesting than the TV most of the time).

In my tank I have top feeders, middle feeders, bottom feeders, fish that are daytime activists and others that are nocturnal – there is always something to watch. When you get used to your fish, you’ll recognise unusual behaviour too because if a fish is stressed or ill, it will act erratically or will become lethargic.

Watching fish is genuinely relaxing and absorbing, try sitting in front of a tank and see if you can stay cross or stressed. Fish are serene and graceful, sometimes brightly coloured, and watching them is like watching an aquatic ballet. I have relaxed to the point of nodding off whilst gazing at my fish tank and that, to me, proves just how calming/restful a tank can be.

I am sure that is why fish tanks pop up in places of potential stress – in restaurants where people might get frustrated waiting for their food, or hotels where long queues form at receptions, in doctors' surgeries or hospital waiting rooms. The tank helps de-stress those environments and perhaps even makes for improved customer satisfaction.

A fish tank is a talking point and in the Baldwin house, there isn’t a child that has come around to play that hasn’t stopped to watch the fish. And in my experience as a parent, there isn’t much that will stop excited kids in their tracks for long.

The value of animals in the home is well known, people often think of cats or dogs in terms of companionship. It is my opinion that fish are as valuable in changing the mood or atmosphere of a place. You can’t stroke a fish, and one won’t sit on your lap, but fish will bring a certain peace and tranquillity to your home.

Fish keeping requires some skill/learning, will cost you some money, will take up some of your time and might result in the odd disaster! But let’s face it – the same can be said for keeping dogs or cats too.

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Today I am feeling sad and the reason for this is that my long term feline companion died last night. This is the first time I have ever had a go at writing an obituary and I thought I would apply myself to the keyboard whilst the sense of loss is still sharp.

My cat “Tottie”, a blue cream, short haired moggy, was originally brought home (with one of her sisters) from the Cats Protection League in Hollywood, Birmingham in January 1999. She and her litter mates had been born on the premises and I picked my two up once they were allowed out.

Tottie was the name the kitten had been given by the league and I never changed it. I was always amused that I could go to the back door and shout for totty and a pussy would always show up!  Juvenile I know, but hey, little things!

The cat was looking increasingly frail and last night I took her to the vets – he gave her an antibiotic injection and said bring her back in a fortnight. This morning my nine year old son came into our room and told us he thought Tots had died.

I went downstairs in my dressing gown and found her in one of the fabric sleeping pods. She looked peaceful but had clearly gone and was starting to get a little stiff!

I had to extricate Tots from the pod which wasn’t so easy bearing in mind that she was stiffening and her claws (which she hasn’t been able to retract for years now) were gripping the pod. A bit of tugging and tipping was required and it all felt decidedly undignified for the old girl - and, if I am honest, pretty depressing for me!

I put her in a bag ready to bury her (when the garden isn’t frozen solid) and then put her body where it would be safe from interference and would stay cold.

Having dealt with that, all before 7am, my daughter, five, and now up, wanted to see the cat. That meant I had to go back outside and unpack the cat and bring her back into the house for my daughter to say goodbye. For me, this was really hard!

The kids were upset and whilst I showed much less emotion, the fact is that I was pretty down too. That cat had been part of my life for longer than my wife or kids (and I had cared for Tots for her entire life). I watched the cat go from being a playful kitten, to maturing, to aging and finally to dying – 14 years of good company. She had a good innings and was ready to go, she died peacefully and without any obvious pain/suffering and for that I am grateful.

I’ll miss her being around though!

Her passing justified a few words and I feel a bit better for writing them! In a few days, life will have moved on but these words will remain and with them a record of Tottie's existence, her positive impact on the lives of the Baldwins and the affection I felt for her – gone but not forgotten!

The snow has only been with us for a matter of hours and already I’ve had one adrenaline fuelled moment of high stress.

I dropped my children off this morning with their child minder. Her house has a steep block paved drive and around 7:40am I pulled on to it to find Angela clearing her drive with a snow shovel and throwing down some salt. She hadn’t quite got as far as the point where I stopped the car; you’ll understand the significance of that in a moment.

My son and I got out of the car and I started a conversation with Angela about snow and possible school closures. Angela stopped me in mid flow with the urgent announcement that my car was moving.

And she was right; despite the fact that the handbrake was on, the car was slowly moving backwards down the drive.  This is the moment that my stress level spiked because my daughter was still strapped in the back of the car, Angela’s drive is walled and the car is only a few weeks old.

I rushed to the car, grabbed the driver’s door handle, pulled open the door, jumped in to the driver’s seat and stood on the foot brake. The combination of the brake pads on the front discs, and the still engaged handbrake on the rear drums, was enough to stop the car’s momentum, which, as I am sure you’ll appreciate, was quite a relief.

By this point, the car’s nearside rear was about a foot away from the wall. Now I know that twelve inches is huge when considered in terms of a certain male appendage, but I tell you, it looked bloody small to me in the context of a near prang!

I started the engine; that gave me back steering and additional electronic assistance, I then moved the car on to the road instead and then unloaded my daughter.  Panic over!

Having had a narrow escape, perhaps bizarrely, I had to reflect just how lucky I had been. If I’d just taken the kids up to the front door (like I would do normally), the car would have begun its journey unnoticed and the first sign of a problem would have been the crunch of it hitting the wall. I am so pleased that an insurance claim was avoided.

On the bright side, the event gave me something to write about and the adrenaline surge made me feel almost young again. Don't need to do it again though!

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Today sees the announcements that HMV has appointed the administrators – I can’t say I am surprised because in my mind it was inevitable, not ‘if’ just ‘when’. My expectation is that selling the business as any kind of going concern will prove impossible and that it will get broken up. HMV is history and, to be honest, it deserves to be.

The company had no unique selling propositions left to justify its existence. It didn’t offer the best price, it didn’t offer any significant standard of service and you couldn’t guarantee what you wanted to buy would be in stock either.

Amazon beats HMV at every metric, aside from paying its full corporation tax liability!

As a case in point; just last week I went into HMV in Milton Keynes shopping centre and impulse purchased two CDs by Green Day. The CDs were in the ‘Big Sale’ and cost me £5 each. I was happy enough at the time until I discovered that my £10 would only have been £8.68 on Amazon (and that would have included the cost of having them posted to me). HMV couldn’t offer value for money even on sale items and to me that had ‘death knell’ written all over it!

I am not embarrassed to admit that I thought about taking the items back on principle, although I didn’t in the end.

Amazon, Rakuten’s Play.com, WowHD and others are easy options for buying physical music, films, computer games and books because they are low engagement purchases. There is no difference between a CD/book/DVD bought from any of these sources, or a supermarket, and on that basis, why would anyone pay more to buy the same thing from HMV? For those that prefer downloads, the choices are even broader.

The High Street is no longer the place for businesses that can’t compete on price for low engagement purchases. I think that means that businesses like WH Smith and Waterstones are doomed too.  Retailers that sell products that require a greater interaction with the buyer, furniture, clothing, cosmetics, shoes etc. will survive because buyers need to try before they buy. Even for those businesses there is risk because customers can still ‘try’ and then ‘buy’ on line later.

Despite having a CD collection that numbers in the thousands, HMV will disappear and I’ll be less bothered by its demise than I was by the loss of Woolworths.

What does bother me is the loss of jobs for all those that work for HMV. Having spent some time unemployed myself, I feel much empathy for those that find themselves out of work for reasons way beyond their own control.

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I received a tweet today from a friend of mine that just cracked me up. Here it is...

“The guy sitting next to me on my FirstCC train to London this morning was watching hardcore porn on his computer. No prude but not the place!”

Tweets, limited in characters as they are, can only convey so much. What the tweet did though is make me think? What could be more antisocial on a train than watching porn? What kind of person would actually be prepared to do it? Did he have headphones on or was he sharing the sound as well as the pictures? What was he doing with his hands?

I need to catch up with John to learn some more but I can only imagine he must have felt pretty uncomfortable.

What on earth would you say to this bloke? If he’s weird enough to watch porn in broad view without regard to anyone else’s sensibilities, how would he react to being asked to turn it off? You’d have to think violence or verbal abuse was a possibility.

If you were on the train would you look away and pretend not to notice? Would you just try and find another seat? Would you just take the opportunity to watch it too?

How could it be on and not attract your attention? For example, in bored moments on trains, I’ve found myself reading the news from other passenger’s newspapers whilst they are still reading them.     

On the bright side, in what was undoubtedly a crowded commuter train, at least John got a seat! He’s perfectly capable of looking after himself and will have seen the comedy in the situation even whilst trying to avoid the flesh show.

And here’s a thought, maybe ‘porn bloke’ was just conducting an experiment and trying to see if he could stop anyone else moving into his personal space. You’d have to bet on it being effective!

Maybe the daily grind and torment of getting to town has pushed this chap to try extreme measures to keep people away.

No point in being generous or trying to rationalise this decidedly odd behaviour; I think ‘porn bloke’ was just a w--ker (regardless of what he was doing with his hands at the time).

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Gn Christmas day, the latest Jeremy Clarkson collection of previously published works appeared in the Baldwin household in the form of the hardback entitled “The Top Gear Years”. The book was a present, ostensibly gifted by my son but in reality bought by the lovely Mrs Baldwin. A Clarkson tome has become a traditional, reliable and appreciated present for me over the last few years and regular visitors will know that I have made reference to them on this site before.

Given that the Top Gear Christmas special will, perhaps bizarrely, not appear on our TV screens until February, the required Top Gear festive fix could instead be gained from reading as opposed to viewing. Going cold turkey was not necessary (although much cold Meleagris Gallopavo was obviously eaten). 

A number of articles have already been read and enjoyed and the volume looks set to provide an entertainment payback that justifies its price. So far two pieces in particular have stuck in my memory; the first (just a paragraph) is a delightful caveat where Clarkson states that his own opinions are not necessarily representative of his own opinions (read it, it’s great); and the second about advice for those interested in writing for car magazines – it’s blunt and it’s an old outpouring but I reckon the advice is still sound.   

As much as I enjoy Clarkson’s style of writing and his irreverence, this post is not going to be a book review, although I may write one later.

This piece is instead going to be about fridge magnets. Over the years I have collected a few different sets of magnets from the Top Gear magazine  - for example I think that I have three different sets of cool walls (in fact I think I am only missing the first set issued in September 2005; see below – so please let me know if you have a spare set).

Back in April 1998, I purchased the magazine and was pleased to find a magnet set that enabled you to write your own car review in the style of Mr C. - the user required to complete the following “If this car was a……………………..it would be …………………………” The set included many dubious review words including testicles, throbbing, dribble, fornicating, dustbin, Norfolk etc. so one’s review could be a little racy.

Given that approaching 15 years have elapsed since the magnets were acquired, it won’t surprise you to know that they have adorned a number of fridges/freezers since and in three different homes in two different towns/cities.

The challenge I now have is that I have no idea how many words originally came with the set. I have 55 word/letter magnets left and I’d love to know if I still have the complete set. Assuming that one or two (or many) have vanished over the years, I’d like to know how many I have lost.

Can you help put my mind at rest?

In previous posts, Crispin Lowrey and Paul Brennecker have been able to help. Can you be the next reader to step up to a challenge? Watch this space for updates.

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"Happy birthday to Me!
Happy birthday to Me!
Happy birthday to Meeeeeeeee!
Happy birthday to Me!"

Today is my birthday and, truth be told, I am feeling a little melancholic. Christmas is done; a new year has arrived; I am carrying a few extra pounds in weight; today is my first day back in the office; and I am another year older.

This morning I asked my son what was special about today and he didn’t know – probably a typical response from a nine year old lad at 6:45am in the morning – not great though! Mrs B. had to remind both our children that it was my birthday. To be fair to the kids, “Happy Birthday” wasn’t the first thing out of the wife’s mouth either.

No one in the office even knew it was my birthday until I laid out the cakes and sweets.

The Cyndi Lauper tune “It’s my party and I’ll cry if I want to” springs to mind - although ‘sulk’ maybe a better adjective in my case than ‘cry’.

Another year into my forties doesn’t feel that wonderful – I am reminded that I am now in the age range where the male suicide rate is highest and where the UK divorce rate peaks. Surely advancing years draws one ever closer to death or debilitating disease?

On the bright side, at least according to Monty Python, the meaning of life is 42 and so maybe this year will be one of great enlightenment. Fingers crossed!

As I wonder what 2013 will bring, another old tune has just popped into my head:

“Will it be mushrooms, fried onion rings?
We’ll have to wait and see
We hope it’s chips it’s chips
We hope it’s chips”

It’s stupid that an eighties Birds Eye Steak Grills advertisement jingle arrived in my head when I was pondering some of life’s bigger questions. But the memory/tune cheered me up and maybe that’s why my brain dredged it up and replayed it to me.

2013 (and indeed 42) will be whatever it is and that is a good philosophy to park the melancholy and get on with wringing the most out of the day/year.  I can’t change being 42, or the festive season ending, but I can reflect on all that was/is good about it, be glad I have a job to come back to and focus upon losing the extra weight around my middle.  

"Que sera, sera 
Whatever will be will be
The future's not ours to see
Que sera, sera"

For tea tonight, I know it’s curry (chips not included) and I am going to look forward to that and opening some presents.

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