Skip to content

Bloke Called Dave

Author & Blogger

Menu
  • About Me
  • Agent
Menu

Category: Growing Up

my five biggest regrets

My Five Biggest Regrets

Posted on April 8, 2021April 8, 2021 by David Lee Stone

Nostalgia can be a curse and to prove it I’ve created a list of five times in my life that I made a decision I’ve always slightly regretted. I’m calling it ‘My Five Biggest Regrets’ but the title is a bit misleading. Creating a list like this is a really important thing to do and if you’re going to get it right then you have to be constructive and try to determine whether in all probability you’re either right or wrong in each case. What do YOU regret? It’s a killer question. If the Road to Hell is paved with good intentions, then I strongly suspect that the Path to Dissatisfaction is paved with overly nostalgic memories, especially ones involving missed opportunities. If you’re autistic, an overthinker or even just an unusually reflective person, then the retrospective analysis is probably a huge part of your mental landscape. In simple terms, retrospective analysis is where you overplay conversations in your head after the event, often applying your own biased narrative to anything that was said. What you end up coming out with can potentially do catastrophic damage to friendships and relationships or even destroy them completely. It’s a curse of a burden to bear, which is why I find movies like ’13 Going on 30′ so incredibly difficult to watch.

Read more
Spoon feeding

Spoon Feeding

Posted on April 3, 2021April 4, 2021 by David Lee Stone

It’s October 2014 and my phone is ringing; it’s a mate I used to play games with (don’t worry; his identity is cunningly disguised in this post). “Dave? It’s Tim. Listen, mate: I can’t stop putting on weight, and I know you do loads of exercise: can you help me out?”

Read more
not on my watch

Not on My Watch

Posted on April 2, 2021April 2, 2021 by David Lee Stone

“Ah, there you are boys. This isn’t a great start, is it? “What time did I tell you?” I look blankly at my best friend but he doesn’t have a watch on either. “Er….nine o’clock?” “I said eight fifty-five, actually.” “I think it IS eight fifty-five.” “Not on my watch.”

Read more
Sports Day

Sports Day

Posted on April 1, 2021April 1, 2021 by David Lee Stone

The picture for this post is very deceiving, because at first glance it appears that I’m totally spanking the five or six plebs still standing on the starting line behind me. In actual fact, those boys are waiting to START the next race….and they’ve been waiting a while. Sports Day at my primary school was usually a competitive event, but most of the bets between the parents focused mainly on whether David Stone would hold up the next race by more or less than ten minutes.

Read more
The Blade

The Blade

Posted on March 26, 2021 by David Lee Stone

Ramsgate is an old town, and old towns have old stories. As time goes on, you hear all the ones people want you to hear: great moments, town heroes, wartime memories, etc. There’s some you don’t hear so much, these days and I’m talking about the heady mix of bullshit and bitter that used to fly around the pubs during the eighties: legends like Jim Scarridge, a man known as ‘The Blade’.

Read more
White Dwarf October 1989

Chasing the White Dwarf

Posted on March 25, 2021March 30, 2021 by David Lee Stone

It’s October 1989 and I’m in my second month at St. George’s School on Westwood Road in Broadstairs. I haven’t been beaten up or bullied yet and the entire secondary school experience is still relatively new and exciting. There are so many amazing bikes, so many new potential friends and so many GIRLS….but I’m not interested in racing bikes, making new friends OR asking out girls (which is very fortunate as I’m going to turn out to be TERRIBLE at those things).

Read more
Dear Geoffrey from Rainbow

Dear Geoffrey From Rainbow…

Posted on March 23, 2021March 30, 2021 by David Lee Stone

I found a letter in my attic the other day: it was written by myself, aged either five or six. The spelling wasn’t great, but when corrected it basically read: Dear Geoffrey from Rainbow, I am worried about you because I watch you every day and you are my friend and I have to tell you that there is a man inside Bungle did you know this do not say anything to Bungle in case he gets angry and the man comes out I never want you to die. Love from David Stone from Ramsgate.

Read more
butt-out-anti-smoking-blog

Butt Out

Posted on March 21, 2021 by David Lee Stone

I grew up in a family of smokers who smoked in between smokes. My mum was the lesser of the these: she only smoked Superkings and bought them in packs of twenty at the local shop. When she couldn’t get Superkings, she would smoke other brands but the fact that she needed to get them from the shop did at least mean she didn’t smoke constantly.

Read more
Labyrinth

Solving The Labyrinth

Posted on March 20, 2021March 31, 2021 by David Lee Stone

During one of the worst years of my childhood, my mum returned from a hospital stay literally wreathed in pain. She’d had a hysterectomy, but something had gone wrong at the end of the operation and all I really remembered from that Winter was constantly turning up the music on my walkman to drown out the sounds of her sobbing in the bathroom. It was a grim, terrifying time: being an only child, you have a certain amount of fear tied up in the fact that there’s really just the two of you: my nan was a borderline alcoholic, and could really only be relied upon to provide unpredictable problems whenever she came back from the pubs.

Read more
The Fear of Cats

The Fear of Cats (Confessions of a Scaredy Cat)

Posted on March 20, 2021March 30, 2021 by David Lee Stone

It would be easy to say that I don’t like cats and cats don’t like me but it’s just nowhere near as simple as that. The war between the cat kingdom and myself began – as many things do – in a pub.

Read more

Posts navigation

  • 1
  • 2
  • Next

Follow Blog via Email

If you want to be the first to know about new posts, type your email below and we'll email them straight to you!
No spam - scouts honour.

Categories

  • Board Games
  • Books
  • Gaming
  • General
  • Growing Up
  • Life
  • Parenting
  • Real Magic

Instagram

Sometimes, I make big mistakes…..but they’re never my fault: not really. Here’s an example, so you can judge for yourself.
Do you want to see what depression looks like? I recently found this video I shot while experiencing one of the worst bouts of depression I’ve endured in recent years. It’s almost funny to see how dead in the eyes I am until the light comes on and I engage robot mode in order to speak. The content of the video isn’t really important. Oh - and my wife is AMAZING. ❤️🤦‍♂️
Nostalgia can be a curse and to prove it I’ve created a list of ten times in my life that I made a decision I’ve always slightly regretted. This is a really important thing to do and if you’re going to do it right then you have to be constructive and try to determine whether in all probability you’re either right or wrong in each case. I’m serious. If the Road to Hell is paved with good intentions, then I strongly suspect that the Path to Dissatisfaction is paved with overly nostalgic memories, especially ones involving missed opportunities. If you’re autistic, an over-thinker or even just an unusually reflective person, then retrospective analysis is probably a huge part of your mental landscape. In simple terms, retrospective analysis is where you overplay conversations in your head after the event, often applying your own biased narrative to anything that was said. What you end up coming out with can potentially do catastrophic damage to friendships and relationships or even destroy them completely. It’s a curse of a burden to bear, which is why I find movies like ’13 Going on 30′ so incredibly difficult to watch (more on the blog - link in bio)
I’m at the mind-bendingly lush Harris & Hoole coffee shop at Tesco Extra just before Christmas, quietly considering whether I’d like to select drowning in their cappuccinos as my chosen method of death, when one of the two guys sitting at the table next to me leans across to his mate and says something that actually makes me spill some of my coffee into the saucer. He says:
The original cover for my 2008 funny pirate fantasy novel, Davey Swag (published in the UK by Hodder).
“It’s Davey from Blockbuster in Ramsgate: store code 260116. I’d like to place a large stock order, please.”

Pages

  • About Me
  • Agent
©2021 Bloke Called Dave | Built using WordPress and Responsive Blogily theme by Superb
Bloke Called Dave
Proudly powered by WordPress Theme: Colorful Newsly.