The Adventures of Dysfunctional Dan

I returned from Rome feeling like a romantic poet having returned from the Grand Tour. Before it was an Amazon show featuring former Top Gear presenters, the "Grand Tour" was where 17th,18th and 19th century elites took trips around the continent to immerse themselves in foreign culture, visit ancient ruins and admire renaissance art. This was largely the purpose of my visit, albeit on a lower budget. Frankly, 21st century Rome doesn't have a lot going for it. It's a city which seems to take no pride in itself, full of litter and graffiti with a disorganised road system which leads to crossing the street leaving you fearful for your life and with a constant sound of car horns blaring in the background. It's also become such a tourist site and I know that I was part of the problem but a place loses something when it's main purpose for existence is tourism. The artist AJC Hare summed it up well back in 1871: "Nothing can be more depressing to those wh...

I've had a great first week of the summer holidays with the whole family off work at the same time, a rare occurrence indeed. On Tuesday we headed up to London and the British Museum. The museum houses incredible historical artefacts stolen from countries across the world. The museum was full of people, especially Japanese tourists stereotypically taking photos of everything in sight. The crowds meant it was difficult to see everything clearly but the museum is so vast you could visit every day for a year and probably still not see everything. That's fine though because you can focus on certain things. I love history. I think many people see it as dull, thinking it's all about kings and queens, battles and endless dates. For me though history is all about people. It's the story of people who lived before we did and there's so much to learn about what being human means. I enjoyed the Egyptian section, largely looking at mummies and the fascinating Egyptian beli...

The summer holidays have finally begun. I always find it a complicated time with mixed emotions. The biggest one is relief. It's so good knowing that you've overcome the challenges of the year and got to the end and now have six weeks to relax in. This year was a particularly challenging one with a difficult class, an inexperienced staff team and being short-staffed for much of it. I always find myself flagging after about five weeks of a term and this final one was nearly eight weeks long so it feels like a rest is well overdue. I think I've aged about five years since September. Weirdly though the challenging year has increased my self-confidence. I've had to step forward a lot more than in previous years, leading the class and supporting my less experience colleagues. It was really tough at times but I feel that I was genuinely successful at doing this. A long time ago I wrote here about astronaut Chris Hadfield. He says that in life you be a minus one, someon...

Football is not coming home but what a journey it was. I'm not into football. As a 26 year old Englishman I often feel I ought to be because it's almost expected. There are various issues with football. For me, sitting and watching anything for ninety minutes (and even longer if there's extra time) is hard work. I don't have the attention span. Then there's footballers themselves who are both incredibly stupid and cheat all the time. Coming from a family of hockey players this is incredibly frustrating- if you even tried to approach the umpire to argue a decision you would be sent to the sin bin in hockey. In football, referees are crowded by argumentative players and have to deal with players cheating by diving, wasting time and committing handball on a regular basis. I thought I'd write a little about following England through this world cup... Three Lions on the Shirt Fifty-Two Years of Hurt :S It all began on a Monday night when England played Tun...

I regularly find myself lacking self-worth and every now and then I do something so utterly ridiculous it can't help but take a knock. Indeed, the knock was literal this week. One evening I went to fill up my car with petrol. The local petrol station is quite small and there is little room between the pumps. I managed to squeeze my car into position but as I tried to get out I realised I was parked so that the driver's door was too close to the hose of the diesel pump. Somehow I managed to squeeze out of the narrowest of gaps. This was a mistake. I stood there awkwardly for a moment considering that I should move my car forward a little but now I was out of the car there was no way to avoid a tricky entry.  I filled up my car, where I look more stupid than most people. For some reason my petrol cap is really low down on the car to the point I have to bend over a little to reach it and the petrol hose is at exactly crotch level. But this humiliation is something I am at ...

I have written here in the past about having dyspraxia, a minor special need which makes me clumsy and hopeless at anything remotely practical. Today I'm going to share my story of learning to ride a bike, something which was greatly affected by dyspraxia though I didn't know as much at the time. The story begins much the same as everyone else's. The time came when my parents decided I was probably old enough to ride a bike and purchased one for me. It came with stabilisers and I rode around the patio on it perfectly happily. But then the time came to remove the stabilisers. I was taken across to the playing field at the end of the street and sat upon my small bike. My Dad would start pushing me and telling me to pedal and I would obliging do so. Then eventually my Dad would try letting go and I'd quickly lose my balance and topple over. This is normal but the difference with me is I never seemed to get much better. The best I'd get was falling over a short way ...

Coming up with a theme to write about week after week is quite challenging, especially when I've not been doing anything of particular interest. This week I thought I'd just ramble on about various things which are happening this week. It's proving to be a challenging time at the moment. For various reasons work has been particularly challenging of late, I've still been suffering from hayfever and I've a thing I'm waiting to hear about which is constantly in the back of my mind. The hayfever has at least abated a little. My eyes are significantly better than they have been though I have developed a twitch in my left lower eyelid. Apparently eye twitches can be caused by eyes becoming dry (a symptom of hayfever) or from taking antihistamines. This leaves me in a confusing situation where I don't know whether to use the antihistamine eye spray or not. For the time being I'm left with another reason to feel self-conscious. The main hayfever sympto...