Karen Carpenter was blessed, and blessed us, with one of the purest, resonant singing voices that I’ve ever heard. Its flawlessness made it one of the most distinctive of our age. I spent much of my childhood singing along to the Carpenters’ greatest hits album on stereo 8 track and even at school, we sang along to Sing.

Goodbye to love, Yesterday once more, Top of the world, We’ve only just begun, For all we know… Jambalaya. The music rang out and as I grew older, I gained an appreciation of Karen’s voice as well as songs… most of the songs, the good ones, not the shit ones that Richard wrote when he was off his tits on booze and drugs.

On her death in early 1980s, the world knew that it had lost a star whose voice was unique and would never be emulated… until Rumer came along a few years ago.

This imposter woman sings with exactly the same voice as Karen Carpenter, it’s uncanny and ridiculous. Listening to her sing, it’s as if she’s even using the same mic setup that captures not only the voice, but the sounds made by her mouth and lips in much the same way as you could hear in the Carpenters’ songs.

And yet she complains about being compared to Karen Carpenter. She should stop trying to sound like her then.

Rumour has it
I heard last week that one of my office colleagues gets slightly freaked out when the toilet lid is left down; she probably assumes that people do this to hide unmovable bad deeds in the pan and to be fare, I think most of us have come across the situation where we’ve lifted the lid to find armageddon in there.

After a terrible bout of some sort of food poisoning a few years ago, I got into the habit of closing the toilet lid before flushing. The last thing you need when you’re infectious is to have all those shitty bugs being vaporised into shitty aerosols when the toilet is flushed and them being dispersed throughout the entire bathroom, landing on taps, towels, the lot. I’d also noticed that the flush in ladies’ at work is so powerful that it sends splashes from the pan as far as the cubicle door. I don’t want faecal particulates landing on me at the best of times, but especially not those of others.

When it transpired that my colleague had mentioned in disgust that “somebody had left the toilet lid down in one of the cubicles again”, I realised that it was probably me who’d done it.

This could, and maybe should, have provided a good opportunity to discuss bathroom hygiene and to regale once again my story of the Karen Silkwood shower, but I was feeling a bit devilish and proceeded to close the lids of all the toilets on the floor. Childish, I know, but maturity has never been one of my strongest attributes.

The thing with gags is they’re supposed to have punchlines, this one doesn’t. It was just my pathetic attempt at giving me something to giggle to myself about for five minutes on a Friday afternoon.

It’s an important matter though, infection control, especially at the time of year when people are catching all sorts of vile vomiting and diarrhoea bugs. What if I happen to be in the ladies’ at the same point as somebody with some sort of poo-borne, shit yourself for ten days, virus flushes without closing the toilet lid? I’ll literally get showered with shit. This is the sort of thing I lose sleep over.

And quite rightly so.

Springsteen
This has been hovering in the back of my mind for a while, but get too distracted by poo.

I hate Bruce Springsteen. I can’t listen to any of the drivel he’s produced, I don’t even like to see photos of him.

His music is dreadful, dire, crap. I think one of the first songs of his that I heard was “Born in the USA”, from the album “Born in the USA” – you know the one where there’s a picture of what I assume is his denim-clad arse with a Stars and Stripes bandana in the pocket.

Just think about “Born in the USA”, the song for a bit. In no particular order, the things I find most annoying about this are:

Mr Springsteen, The Boss, I wonder if anybody has ever told him that he can’t sing, or write songs. I listen to his music and, 99% of the time, it sounds like some geriatric stroke victim just shouting out and slurring utter rubbish. He also shows his armpits too much and this is unforgivable. I hate armpits.

And yet he’s so highly rated, especially by BBC Radio 2 presenters and BBC Radio 2 listeners. I suppose it goes with the territory, but you can guarantee that you’ll hear Born in the USA or Born to run at least twice each week on this station – and I only listen to it for about ten hours a week.

I wish I knew how to hack into computer systems if only so I could get into Radio 2’s music files and delete all the Springsteen tracks. And while I’m at it, I’d get shut of Van fucking Morrison too, miserable bastard. As for Rumer? Need I even go on?

You can guarantee that the all request Friday drivetime show will have Born to run/Born in the USA and Brown eyed girl. If you happen to be listening, you may cheer yourself with thoughts of me shouting at the radio.

I spent much of my life as a scientist measuring things. To quantify stuff within a mix of other stuff, you measure the [stuff]unknown against a standard curve of [stuff]known – I’d put the “unknown’ and “known” in subscript if I knew how to. The measurements were quality controlled within and between assays using other samples of [stuff]known and the whole thing would be ditched if it fell short of expected minimal standards for precision and accuracy.

Standards are great: without much thought, we assess each other and things against our own standard curves, but those things or people that fail the assay can simply be rejected rather than promoting further investigation to gain further insight into why they don’t fit within the acceptable normal ranges for “stuff”. Life isn’t a scientific study, thank goodness.

In many aspects of my life, I’m difficult to please, so I like to surround myself with things and people that fit within my own narrow normal tolerances for stuff. Maybe I don’t have narrow normal ranges, but I do have high thresholds. No, that’s incorrect. I have high thresholds and low tolerances.

When I consider the things in my life, they have to meet certain minimum criteria. Foodstuff aside, these are:

You can apply these standards to any range of things, from gadgets, to houses, cars, even girlfriends.

Certain things in life can be compromised on. So for example when it comes to my car, it’s useful, affordable, it does what I want and it’s reliable. It also sort of makes me happy because it means I have freedom of movement whenever I like, but ideally I would prefer it if it had four doors, that it was black, had a bigger engine, was newer and that it had height-adjustable seatbelts.

My house is another good example, and this ticks nearly if not all the boxes.

When it comes to romantic partners, who knows? As I get older, and carry deeper emotional scarring from previous encounters with evil bitches from hell women, I think I’m just not willing to compromise at all. Should I ever find myself in a relationship again, and at this point in time it’s looking unlikely, I’m not going to settle for somebody who doesn’t meet my expectations. Why should I? Why should anybody? Anybody apart from any future girlfriend of mine of course. She will have to meet the following criteria:

In addition to these though, she’ll need the patience of a saint, the ability to deal with my strange obsessive habits and have no personality disorders of her own.

I’m expecting a long wait.

I always claim that I detest “going out”, maintaining that the thought alone of leaving my home for a few hours to be in the company of others is enough to give me a fit of the screaming ab dabs. On reflection, I realise that it’s just the thought of going out that gives me an anxiety attack, rather than the actual going out and spending time with people. I love spending time with people, I revel in it. Being with people gives me the opportunity to… do what humans are supposed to do: interact with each other; share stories, conversations, experiences; recall misguided features on Blue Peter about people with cerebral palsy; get silly; be serious; have fun.

The stress of going out stems from the days when going out was something special that meant dressing up in a frock. Dressing up. In a frock. Being somebody with a very negative self image, I’d always shy away from things that attracted the attention of others, be it an outfit that was unusual for me, a new haircut, or a dazzling sombrero (even thought sombreros are the ultimate in high fashion, we all agree). Any situation that stimulates the “what should I wear?” conversation with myself = BAD. Very bad indeed.

Considering the recent adoption of American-style school proms here in the UK, I am so very glad that I grew up in the 1970s and 80s. Putting somebody like me in that situation would have had me in therapy. It would have been like Carrie, only so much worse, in my own mind at least.

On the other side of the coin, put me in a situation with friends, where I’m allowed to carry my usual appearance of somebody who’s just crawled up an embankment after a train derailment, and I LOVE IT. I do not excel at introducing myself to new people and I find it uncomfortable to strike up a conversation with a total stranger unaided by the presence of a mutual friend. There’s that strange awkwardness of the first few minutes while you try to suss them out, well for me the strange awkwardness of the first thirty seconds in which I suss them out, decide that they don’t interest me, and try to find an excuse to leave that particular conversation and move on to the running buffet.

Then there are the conversations at parties that you strike up with total strangers about fridge freezers. To come across somebody admiring a fridge freezer (substitute with any appliance, gadget, car) with their partner automatically sets the “this person is safe and normal” lights flashing and I feel at ease enough to throw in a banal remark that will either go nowhere but cause no offence, or help to strike up a conversation and a booze-fuelled interaction between my then girlfriend and the female partner in the fridge-freezer couple. And thus a friendship was born.

Because I feel uncomfortable with myself, I think I hide behind a multitude of layers in social situations. The top layer is generally “tit”, which allows me to act the goat and act as if I don’t really care whether people like me or not. Do I care whether people like me or not? Probably not actually, but not in way that I’d be deliberately offensive to a complete stranger, just a little odd I suppose.

It’s just about the anniversary of the breakup with my ex. It hit me terribly hard and I guess I’m only just about at the acceptance stage of the grieving process, it’s taken so long and I still yearn for revenge. Saying that though, I’m OK. I’m actually OK when I never thought I’d get through the year. Mine is not the sort of family that talks about “feelings” and things, we just shout at each other a lot most of the time, but Mum engaged me in conversation this evening. I didn’t really listen to what she was saying because my instant reaction to that sort of thing is to go into a blind panic, cover my ears and “la-la” to myself. One bit I did hear though was her suggesting that I join some sort of social group in the area. “There’s lots of stuff going on around you,” she offered, “the church magazine advertises all sorts of activities”. Yes, like setting gay people on fire, which actually might be interesting to see whether they scream more about their clothes being ruined or being in agony from dying on fire.

Even in obvious jest, I’m probably not supposed to make comments like that. I should save them for the next party I go to in Chorlton, but that would hardly provide a mixed demographic for measuring offence levels since people in Chorlton are humourless lefties who take everything so bloody seriously. They actually believe in the Guardian and the BBC in much the same way as young children believe in the tooth fairy and Father Christmas. And I certainly don’t think any mention of Blue Peter would be wise: “Blue? Tory, more like! Tory and sexist too! Why not just call it Thatcher Rapist? It should be non-gender specific like Rainbow Bod. Actually, I’m going for artificial insemination next week and I was going to call my child Sky Mandela, but I might go for Rainbow Bod instead.” Still, I’d like to see their reaction to the mention of the word Joey.

But at the other end of the scale, what sort of social activities might be on offer in the suburbs of Bolton? EDF “knit against Islam” evenings? The Radcliffe “Ooh, I’m really not sure I like the sound of that” club? The Prestwich “Let’s fill all the parking spaces at Tesco with trolleys” collective? Or maybe even the Bury “Drive your way around Bury without getting lost and/or writing off your car” society.

I like going out, the being out bit of it… so long as I don’t have to get dressed up… or meet too many new people… or do it more than four times a year. I’m also happy staying in. Surely this comprises a healthy balance of social interaction?

It’s very late. I’ve been up watching the tellybox, of all things! After a couple of episodes of The Killing, I’d been ready to turn in when I happened across a Big Bang Theory double bill on one of the 4s. I identify with Sheldon Cooper, or should I say, twenty year old Tina would identify with him. Back then, in the last century, I was pretty amazing academically, but my social skills left an awful lot to be desired. These days, I’m not amazing anymore.

During that period from studying for my A levels to my first degree, I was so intensely into every piece of knowledge on offer that ignored just about every other aspect of my development as a person. I was a geek when geeks weren’t cool, when cool wasn’t cool. I had a mental ability to shrink myself down and be part of mitochondria and nuclei – to be there in the rough endoplasmic reticulum as proteins were synthesised from mRNA. I was a ribosome and proud! The Krebs cycle was a dizzying roller coaster, but cyclic AMP always confused me.

But it was outside of the world of biochemical reactions that I felt most at home, chemistry was my thing, all those photons getting excited and throwing out all the delta G whatever. And then there were the electrons. People who haven’t studied chemistry much won’t realise that it is comprised of a multitude of disciplines. There’s physical chemistry that just makes normal people cry: anybody who’s studied chemistry as part of a biological sciences course will shrink in terror and rage at the mention of Chang. I am in my happy place, I am in my happy place. Then there are the much more elegant subjects of inorganic and organic chemistry, the latter being my absolute favourite.

It was while studying organic chemistry that I learned that electrons were red and that they danced a tango with others, being drawn this way and that, doing their thing. (I mentioned earlier that I’d lost all academic aptitude).

Then there were the practical classes: eugenol from cloves that left its aroma on labcoats for an entire semester; lignocaine that actually worked and deadened gums. The absolute ecstasy of getting a 99% yield and a high purity IR spec beat any joy that could be achieved from recreational drugs… I’d add, “or sex”, but it just wasn’t on my radar at the time.

I never thought the joy of learning and achieving would stop, but it did… when learning became hassle and the achievements were replaced by a constant struggle to get shit to work, just fucking work, while I was doing my PhD. I finally grew up too and noticed the world around me: “so what if this transcription factor is switched off in this tumour cell line? My dad’s been diagnosed with a hideous cancer and I’ve realised that I’m gay and I don’t know what to do about it”.

The world is made up of subatomic particles, doing their thing, but our lives are comprised of far more than this. You can’t fit family, feelings, relationships and love into an equation, but it’s always nice to be able to tell people that electrons are red.

It’s amazing the information you can get from complete strangers just be talking to them. In Asda just now, the lady on the till told me that after years of having all her family of 18 people around for Christmas Day, she was keeping this year to just her close family. Apparently, her sisters just sit around and wait to be served on instead of helping out. She serves Christmas dinner on her best china and insists on washing up after their starter before dishing up the main course.

A three course meal for Christmas dinner eh? In our house, breakfast was selection box and sherry and starter was cheese balls and Twiglets.

Her favourite drink is port.

For my part of the bargain, she could have gathered that I’m single, that I have a brother, a sister, a niece and elderly parents, and that my mother has had a recent knee operation.

Today in work I had a meeting with my boss in which I happily told her about the gradual recovery from my mental health problems, but in which I volunteered other information about my health and my personal life.

It’s odd how so much emphasis is put on confidentiality and privacy, yet most of us are more than happy to discuss the minutiae of our lives with just about anybody… apart from those closest to us.

And today came the distressing news that a health professional had taken her own life because she’d been conned into passing on a call from some radio show hoaxers who were conducting a prank and enquiring about the health of a member of the Royal Family. Such a duty is placed on healthcare staff about the personal information and privacy of hospital patients, yet most individuals are more than happy to tell any old person about their health issues; the representatives of celebrities even provide information to the press about their clients’ health.

We’re naturally a trusting sort and this can be the downfall of so many. I’ve never been the victim of a con artist, but in the past I’ve happily provided my bank details to charity muggers who convince me that it’s a good idea to pay a regular charitable contribution to whatever cause they’re being paid to promote. MUG! And I’m supposedly quite intelligent. Then again, I have no common sense and I see my contribution to Shelter as a not too bad price to pay for this.

I do worry about my parents though. These are the people who insist on paying their utility bills in full as they come in rather than setting up a potentially money-saving monthly payment scheme, yet they pay people who knock on the door in cash for gardening services or repairs to their shed roof. I’ve told them not to hand over any cash or sign up to anything unless they discuss with us lot first…. because I obviously have the track record to be trusted!

Do I care if complete strangers get hold of my health records history? No, not at all, but I’d absolutely DIE if my mum ever saw them and found out that I smoke.

I’m sure I’m not alone in my love for squeezing spots and blackheads but I’m quite (un)fortunate in that my skin is actually quite good and that I’ve never been afflicted with acne, or even many spots. What’s frustrating is that, when I do get them, they are rubbish: just painful lumps that rarely develop into anything that can be squeezed with a satisfying pop and a trail of goo splattering up the bathroom mirror.

There’s clearly a lesson in “leave it alone” to be learned from scalp spots that take you by surprise when you scratch your head.

From experience, the most painful spots are situated:

• in the ear
• lip margin
• scalp (these have a direct line to the occipital lobe)
• chin
• that thing that separates the nostrils

Much of my time as a teenager was spent looking at the faces of my peers and marvelling at how they were so heavily pitted with so many blackheads. Just how did this happen? I suppose the greasy hair was kind of a giveaway, but my obsessive little brain wondered how those blessed with such entertaining skin could resist spending hours squeezing their faces off (or failing that, having a wash). If they had, would it have changed the actual structure of their face? I doubt I’ll ever find out.

It’d be great if cats and dogs got blackheads, the little dog has the perfect temperament for having his spots squeezed. They may not get blackheads, but cats do get abscesses. These are things that you tend not to notice until the day that you’re petting the poor thing and notice a lump, with a scab, that you can’t resist picking at… BOOM! An erupting mass with its own blood supply and nervous system oozes out from the poor beast under its own force and it just doesn’t stop. You think it’s done, go to clean the wound and it starts all over again. Amazing!

Cats and dogs
My recent thoughts of getting a cat have nothing to do with any prospect of dealing with abscesses I might add. They’re different from dogs, obviously, in that they’re… nice. I do love Rocky, but I miss having a feline companion – a tabby one, called Max, with big ears, and a limp. I guess I’m missing my old cat Max and although I know no other animal will ever come close to him, there’s no harm in trying out a few to see what they end up like. Then I think about all that fur, litter trays, smelly cat food, vets’ bills, the road, the possibility that it’ll be as psychotic as my dog, or eaten by him, and the answer is no, you’re not getting a cat.

Consideration has also been given to getting another dog, but luckily I’ve been rescued by winter and the reminder of how appalling Rocky is at walking on his lead. Having to take another out at the same time would have me abandoning them and throwing myself under a passing truck.

So it comes back down to me and him and here we are at bedtime, him snoring away, me on the point of joining him. This will do just nicely.