A few words from Rob Mansfield

I’m an average-sized bloke - not big, not small. I’m comfortable with my sexuality - perhaps slightly more in touch with their feminine side than most, but slightly resolutely male.

I can talk about sport with the best of them, drink beer till I fall over and pull the most random trivia out of thin air.

So why oh why do I feel totally intimidated when I walk past a group of workmen in their luminous reflective vests?

They never say anything to me, probably never even notice me, but just make me feel unfeasibly uncomfortable.

And, for the life of me I don’t know why. Why do these men do this to me? What part of me are they tapping into so that I feel like this? It totally beats me!

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I did something for the first time yesterday - I freecycled something!

For those of who you haven’t heard of it, it’s a way of getting rid of unwanted items that aren’t worth selling, but are too good to go to the dump!

Our local Habitat is closing down and by chance we went on Saturday to discover that the 4 dining chairs we’ve been toying with buying for almost a year were in the clearance sale at 50% off - bargain!

So what to do with the old, slightly creaky and wobbly set of 4 that aren’t actually that old? C was all for loading them into the car and taking them to the dump, but I’ve always wanted to use freecycle and now seemed an opportunity too good to miss.

So I posted my chairs on my local group and within 10 minutes of the post being approved, I had 4 takers.

I democratically chose the first person who replied (although that’s not necessary, according to freecycle guidelines) and at 9.30 last night, I proudly said goodbye to our old dining chairs and watched them driven away in the back of a van.

I feel good knowing they’ve gone to a good home and also feel environmentally satisfied that they were saved from landfill. Now, what else can I give away?

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The Olympics reminded me of some long-forgotten nugget of totally useless trivia that I learned while studying for my A Level in Contemporary History.

My teacher for World History 1945- the present day was Robert Swann - a bearded chap who was obscenely intelligent. His knowledge was quite remarkable and he’d wander into the lesson without any notes and just talk to us about a subject for 45 minutes and expect us to make the relevant notes.

A bit like a University lecture, except that even at university many lecturers give you print-outs of the most salient points at the end.

Anyway, I digress. One of the things I remember being taught was how the modern Chinese Mandarin came to be written in Western (roman) script.

For most of the 20th century, Chinese words and names, such as Mao were transliterated using something called Wade-Giles. Thus for years, everyone knew the capital of China as Peking.

Then in around 1979/1980, it was decided - I know not by whom - to revert to something called Pinyin, the system developed within China to romanize the Chinese characters.

So now we know the capital as Beijing, although I’m not sure if we call the dish Beijing Duck any more.

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