More Clock Shenanigans

Since you're all so interested in this little voyage of clockular discovery that I'm on, I have another useful snippet of trivia for you, which I picked up in conversation today. Take a look at this picture:



This is the clock on the front of the world famous Corn Exchange in Bristol (source of the well known phrase 'cash on the nail' - but that's another story). Take a look at the clock. Nothing remarkable about it, I think you'll agree. If you were looking at it in real life however, you'd notice that rather than an hour hand, minute hand and second hand, it's actually equipped with two minute hands, each set 9 minutes apart.

These reflect the difference between Bristol time and London time - Bristol being 200km due west of London the sun rises and sets nine minutes later than it does in London. Keeping different times was fine until the coming of the railway, when it soon became apparent that agreement would have to be reached on exactly when trains arrived and departed. Thus began the concept of Greenwich Mean Time.

Apparently we can thank Isambard Kingdom Brunel - another famous Bristolian - for correcting this rather irritating anomaly. I imagine his conversation with the Minister for Clocks And Stuff would have gone something like this:

Isambard: Ere, me babber. 'Ave youw notessed thaat when youw catch ther trainl from Lundun to Bressle, yer waaaatch ends up noine menets faasrt?

Minister: What's that, old chap? Didn't quite catch it on account of the rather poor Vicki Pollard impression.

Isamabard: Sorry moi lurve. Carn't 'elp 'et. I's frum Bressle, see. Waaatch faarst 'en Bressle.

Minister: Watch? Fast? Bristol? What are you whittering about man? By the way old chap, I've noticed that my watch is always 9 minutes fast whenever I take a jaunt to bristol. Go and sort it out for us, there's a good fellow.

Isambard: Cheers then, Drive. Sorry. Thaat were outta 'abit. I gotta ideal. Frum now on, all ther clarks in Bressle be put ferwerd noine menets so they's ther same as Lundun's. Prublem sulved.

Minister: Splendid. Now tell my why you have such a strange name...

There ya go.

Sofa Related Head Injuries

So, having driven all the way to Hereford and back to collect a sofa for Stead's house we discovered that, no matter which way we tried to do it, the damn thing just wouldn't fit down his hallway.

Obviously, Stead being a calm and rational human being, took this news in a calm and rational manner, applying a positive spin to the occasion. I have slightly edited the wording of his rant-style monologue to protect those of a sensitive nature. All epithets have been replaced with asterisks:

"****! *** **** ******* ****! ****! ******, **** ******** ******!!! ***** ***** *** *******! **** **** ***!!!"

At this point, the sofa, which was tightly wedged between the staircase and the opposing wall, was subjected to a barrage of calmly rational kicks and blows, then pulled back and repeatedly slammed back into place in a calm and rational effort to free it from it's predicament.

Unfortunately, I had been providing a support function behind the sofa and received many blows to the head from said furniture. Lucky sofas are soft, eh? That said, I'm not sure anyone would have noticed had I received severe head injuries and suffered brain damage...

The Clock Thing

I've only just noticed that almost all clocks that display Roman Numerals use IIII instead of IV to represent 4 o'clock:

Very odd. At first I thought it was the just the one in the van-hire office I was in at the weekend, but then I saw one in an Indian restaurant this evening. It was really starting to bug me. And when I got home, I discovered that my own mantelpiece clock features the very same phenomenon. So I've been surrounded by clocks displaying this incorrect Roman numeral all my life and never noticed...

So obviously, I googled it. I'm not, it seems, the only person to have noticed this and wondered why. There doesn't appear to be a definitive answer, however. Some of the less mundane suggestions are:

The letters 'IV' were an abbreviated for of JUPITER in Roman times, so the Roman used to put IIII on their sundials because they didn't want the face to read 'one, two, three, GOD, five...'.

It's an aesthetic thing - the VIII is quite a 'heavy' character while the IV is not, so the IV was changed to IIII to even up the clock face.

King Louis the something or other was a dumb-arse (well, he was french) and when presented with a clock bearing the IV, he announced that it was wrong and insisted that it be changed.

So there you go.

Have a nice day.

Spam - A Theory

Just thought I'd float a half baked theory here...
Now, here's the dictionary.com definition of spam:

spam
n. Unsolicited e-mail, often of a commercial nature, sent indiscriminately to multiple mailing lists, individuals, or newsgroups; junk e-mail.
tr.v. spammed, spam·ming, spamsTo send unsolicited e-mail to.
To send (a message) indiscriminately to multiple mailing lists, individuals, or newsgroups.

It has occured to me this year that I have been the victim of an insidious spam campaign for years without realising it. Every year, this one included, I have been spammed by the greetings card industry. They're very clever about it. It's kinda like a sneaky virus that causes unwitting victims to flood their working colleagues with unwanted junk mail. What's more, and what makes this a particularly nasty form of spam, is that as the recipient of the spam, you are forced, out of politeness to simply accept this spam graciously and worse, display it prominently on your desk, thereby demonstrating to the world that you are a victim.

That's right, Christmas Cards are spam. Not all christmas cards - they do have their place, which I'll get onto in a moment. Specifically, however, those cards that are issued indiscriminately to all and sundry by office workers irrespective of whether they like the recipient. This is often done with the excuse 'I don't want anyone to feel left out'. I now have 21 instances of christmas spam on my desk.

Now I'm of the feeling that the world in general has been successfully convinced by the greetings card industry that it is neccessary to spend a fortune on bits of coloured card every year, for birthdays, christmas, easter, mother's day, father's day, granny's day, the only drink worth havingcher's day, secretary's day and, I noticed earlier this year, boss' day.

I have maintained for quite some time that, certainly in the case of Christmas, such cards are required only in the event that you will not be present around the time of the celebration in question, to send your best wishes to those friends and family that you will not see. Which is what I do.

So... Office Christmas cards as spam. Discuss...

It's All Gone Horribly Wrong

My life is falling apart around me. The end is nigh.

Actually, that may be a little bit of an exaggeration. Possibly...

My boiler has broken down for the second time in two weeks. I have a call in to British Gas to get Boiler Dude out here, but I have to wait in for him ALL DAY 'cos they can't give me an estimated arrival time.

Worse than that, my stock of teabags is dangerously low. I have 2 left. That's not enough to last the next hour and a half, let alone the whole day. And I can't go out and get any more 'cos I have to wait in for Boiler Dude. Right now, I'm drinking instant coffee and wearing a fleece!

To cap it all, my broadband modem decided to die on me this morning, so I've just spent an hour or so getting it running again.

My First Time

I like to try and do something I've never done before as often as possible. Last night, I drove down a road in Westbury On Trym which I'd never been down before. Tomorrow night, I'm going 10 Pin Bowling - amazingly I've never been before - and today, I was sellotaped to my desk by a temp.

Wheelie Bins and Couriers

For this story, I need to give you two important pieces of information:

Important Fact #1: South Gloucestershire County Council operate a rubbish collection pregramme that consists of two wheelie bins, one black for general domestic rubbish and one green for recyclable rubbish such as card and garden waste. These bins are emptied by the nice bin-men on alternate Thursdays - one week the black bin is emptied, the next the green bin. Tomorrow morning, at around 7.30 am, my green bin will be emptied.

Important fact #2: I ordered some stuff from Amazon.

You can probably already see where this is going.

Following some terribly interesting stuff post-work activities today, I arrived home at about 10.30pm, to find, amongst the junk mail that had accumulated on my doormat* a card from Securicor Omega Express, a national courier firm.
Of the three boxes that could have been ticked on the card, the courier had chosen to tick the one which bore the statement 'Your package has been left in a sefe place'. This was followed by a box in which the courier had scrawled something about my wheelie bin. I took this to mean that the package was beside it, or behind it or some equally sensible place.

Oh no. Despite searching around the bins in the dark, I was unable to locate the package. 'Oh dear,' I thought to myself. 'This does not bode well. Perhaps it has been pilfered. Nicked, as it were. I've been robbed!'

I rescrutinised the card. It clearly said: 'Fnarglespotsnik alker wheelie bin'.
One last look around the bins uncovered nothing of interest. Resigned to the fact that I would have to contact the couriers to enquire and, more than likely re-order my stuff from Amazon, I headed back down the garden path to my back door.

It was at this moment that my faith in the general common sense of the human race utterly, utterly failed me.

'No,' I thought to myself. 'He wouldn't have. Surely not. Especially not the day before the green bins are collected...'

I will now give you three guesses as to what I found in my green recycling bin that was to be emptied by the nice council bin-men first thing in the morning.



*Actually, I don't have a doormat by my front door. This reference to my doormat is not a lie, but rather what's known as dramatic license to keep the narrative flowing. 'On the floor in front of my front door' just doesn't sound right.

'Thank You' vs 'Congratulations'

So, I bought myself a new remote control thingummy last week (one of those ones you can use on all of your electrical doodahs; it's very cool, lights up blue and I can use it on my Playstation2, woohoo).

Upon opening the manual, I noted that the first thing it said was 'Congratulations for buying...'
'Thanks very much', I thought to myself, 'But it really wasn't that difficult. I went into the shop, took it off the shelf and then paid for it. It's not like I won an Olympic medal or anything'.
The reason I bring this up now is that one of my team just had a new desk phone delivered. the first thing it said in his manual was 'Thank you for buying...'

Now it probably comes as no surprise that, despite the fact that this is a ridiculously trivial semantic discrepancy, I have an opinion on it.

I would rather see the manufacturers of a product thank me for purchasing their product over that of a competitor's, rather than congratulating me on choosing it. In many cases, I will have bought a clearly inferior product for cost reasons - for example a 28" TV instead of the huge 52" plasma screen that I really want or a little 128mb Mp3 player intead of an iPod. The 'Congratulations' kinda implies to me that they believe their product is better than all of the other products on the market when it clearly isn't. I also find it vaguely condescending.

Well, there you go. I've got that terribly inconsequential thing off my chest. Now go and read something more interesting, will ya?

Thursday night in the hospital

I hate hospitals.

Despite my aptitude for avoiding serious illness and injury, I still seem to spend an inordinate amount of time in medical facilities of various types.

Take last night for example. I was required to visit the Stead on his sickbed at Southmead Hospital and endure his moaning and complaining about all the sick people around him. imagine that... sick people in hospital. Still, some of the nurses were quite attractive...

Anyways... following a really nasty headache that came on whilst bench-pressing the best part of 70 kilos and hung around for a few days afterwards, Stead felt it best to get in touch with his doctor, who suggested a CT scan. So I got a text message at around lunchtime from Stead saying 'I've been admitted to hospital...' He followed this up with a naughty, naughty word that I just can't bring myself to post here!

So I found myself driving over there after work to take him a toothbrush and other overnight essentials. We hung around for several hours in the hope that he'd be discharged as the headache has almost completely vanished. In the end the results of the various tests they'd done came back as clear, except the lumbar puncture, which was being delayed as the computers were out of action.

Just as we thought they'd finished with him, one of the nurses (not one of the attractive ones, regrettably) came over and announced that Stead was to be moved to an overnight ward upstairs.

Stead was understandably convcerened about this as he didn't want to stay overnight. Once he was sfaly ensconced in the new ward, he took an instant dislike to the other patients - the old, coughing woman and the itchy man across the way who kept telling people what was wrong with him.

After an hour, he finally decided that he's had enough and announced to the nurse that he was discharging himself. A brief chat to a very pragmatic duty manager later, we were on our way... via the Indian for a curry. Mmmm...

Apparently the Lumbar results came through earlier this morning and were all clear. Which means that they don't know what was wrong with him!

The Wrong Coat

Yeah. This is a dumb one. I'm dumb.

This lunchtime I grabbed my coat and headed out to lunch only to discover...

...that I'd flagrantly stolen someone else's coat!

I only noticed about halfway down the street when I stuck my hands in the pocket and found a pair of woolly gloves inside. Whilst similar to mine (in that it was long and black), it was clearly more expensive, having a patterned gold lining and a generally better fit. My suspicion is that it belonged to one of the senior managers in the office.

Still. I snuck it back on the coat hanger when I got back. Nobody mentioned it, so i think I got away with it.

Next week, I shall try stealing a lady's coat...

The Origin of Love

I've been teaching myself Flash. And now I've created a new blog to show off the results. Go see it on my DazzaMoo blog!

My Exploding Dinner

I had curry for my tea last night. That doesn't seem like an interesting thing to write about, but an odd thing happened while I was preparing it. It exploded.

It was one of those microwave ready meals. I've been pretty lazy on my holiday and have been eating oodles of what can only be descibed as crap. Anyway, I followed the instructions exactly. To the letter. Honest.

Peirce film lid. For minutes on high. Peel back lid. Stir. Recover. 4 more minutes on high.

It was during the '4 more minutes' that I discovered that one of the ingredients that they neglected to tell me about was the 400 punds of TNT that seemed to have been mixed into the madras sauce. I stepped into the other room for a moment and heard a muffled 'poom'. On rushing back into the kitchen, I discovered that about 50% of my dinner was splattered over the inside of the microwave.

I ate the other 50%.

Cats Suck

So it turns out that cats suck. Rochester just hunkered down right next to his freshly cleaned out litter tray and took a wee wee right in front of me. He just couldn't understand why I was less than impressed. I kicked his arse, I did.

Neil

I popped into town today as Neil Gaiman was in Waterstones signing copies of his new book, Anansi Boys. When I first arrived, there was a very long queue of very pale people all dressed in black with interesting peircings, which kinda scared me, so I ran and hid for an hour. The were gone when I returned.

I've met Mr Gaiman a couple of times before and as always he was a very nice man. Sadly Rochester ate the last book he signed for me. When I mentioned this to Neil, he seemed to think that this was right and proper. Not sure I'm quite with him on that one, but I'll let it pass!

Interestingly, Mark Buckingham, a comic artist that has worked a lot with Gaiman, was also loitering around. He wasn't signing anything and Neil agreed that it was most likely that he was hoping that some of Neil's coolness would rub off on him.

Too Many Mugs

One of the peculiarities of staying with my parents is the sheer number of mugs that get used throughout the day. I'm not sure if this is a phenomenon shared by other dishwasher users, but yesterday, they went through 27 mugs. I know, cos I counted 'em. Given that there is a maximum of three of us in the house at any given time (and there certainly weren't any visitors), am I wrong to think that this is unreasonable?

Anyway. The phenomenon is explainable. My parents insist on using a fresh mug every time they have a mug of tea or coffee. Even when they have two in very quick succession, the old mug goes in the dishwasher and a new cup comes out of the cupboard.

Personally, I think it's incredibly wasteful. But I could be wrong. Of course, my point of view is somewhat biased as I often nurse the same mug for 2 or 3 days (obviously it gets rinsed out after every... well most uses) before giving in and washing it properly.

Poo Bins, Day Time Telly And Mushrooms

Those psychic readers out there will know that I am actually at my mother's hose for a week. If you don't already know that, then, fankly, you're a pretty crappy psychic. You suck and you should quit right now.

Mum went into hospital a month or so ago for a Stem cell transplant, which was all very exciting and that, and now she's home. But she's still a bit poorly, so I thought I'd give up a week of my holiday to come and do stuff for her.
Boy am I regretting it. I've suffered more daytime tv in the last 48 hours than any man should have to suffer in a lifetime. I may die.

I was ordered to peel mushrooms today for Mum's stew. Peel mushrooms? I've never heard anything so bizzare in my life. I ain't never peeled mushrooms and I don't intend to start.... oh, ok... I caved and peeled them. It's my mum. She has this... look.

Just a quick note about dog poo, now. It's very thoughtful of the council to put up those red dog poo bins at popular dog-walking spots such as the one I found myself at yesterday evening. Not much thought, however seems to have been placed into the actual location of the poo bins. right at the parking area is not especially helpful. There are few dogs that will do their dirty business at the very start of the walk. Rather, they will wait about 5 or 10 minutes and the take a dump in the long grass at the side of the path, which means that one then has to collect the poo in a specially designed device (cunningly disguised as a carrier bag) and carry the fetid stinking mess with you for the rest of the walk. So - for future reference, council - walk away from the car park for 5 or 10 minutes and stick the poo bin there. Thanks.

On a similar vein... Presumably there is a job out there, the title of which is 'Poo Bin Man'. You can picture the conversations when he gets home from work.

"Did you do anything nice at work today, dear?"

"No, darling. I emptied some poo into my truck."

Holidays, Broken Men and Movies

A number of seemingly unrelated subjects in that title, there. Or so you might think. But in actual fact, I can assure you that they are all cunningly interrelated.

I shall start with the holidays. I am on my holidays. By that, I don't mean that I have been whisked away to a Carribean island for an exotic getaway, rather thant I have taken two weeks off work to do some stuff. Mostly, I might add, stuff that doesn't involve work. To be even more specific, it will mostly involve sleeping in. Now I know you're all jealous there and I can't really blame you for that, but what I can do is attempt to alleviate your envy of my current non-working status by pointing out that I have only take one full week of holiday so far, and that was waaaaay back in July.

Now, yesterday, the first official day of my holiday, I did nothing. At all. Well, that's clearly not true as it is impossible to do nothing without being dead. And even then one is kinda lying there, rotting, so one is even engaging in an activity, albeit a somewhat inactive one, post mortem. As it were. Well. My point is, that I was astonishingly lazy and watched a kung foo movie (House of Flying Daggers, which was very good, but before you ask is not the eponymous movie that you're on tenderhooks for), ate some stuff, watched more telly, played City of Heroes for a bit and then retired to my bed for some well deserved kip. So, in summation, I wrote a big long paragraph about how I did nothing of note, thereby wasting your time. Hah.

Today, I was far more active. After getting up and doing a spot of tidying and dishwashing, I watch some telly and then meandered my way out to Hell... er... The Mall at Cribbs Causeway. I know, I know, but it was a moment of insanity. I did of course regret it the moment I enetered the building. It was heaving. I only needed a couple of things - a new T-shirt or two and a duvet set for my lovely, lovely bed.

So there I was in The Mall. And so, it would seem, was the entire population of Great Britain. Honest. I counted them. In fact, you the reader, was the only person not present. It would seem that the Christmas shopping frenzy has already started, with the desperate hordes (I was gonna use the word 'mobs', but decided that 'hordes' was ever so slighty more derogatory) of people obeying their herd instinct to pay tribute to the false idol that is the Retail Sector. Er... I may have gone a little far with that description. I'm not sorry, though.

A number of things struck me:

Firstly, as always, the instant I stepped into the shopping centre proper, I suffered an unnatural thirst. This is because their air conditioning and dehumidifiers suck every last drop of moisture out of the air. I strongly believe that if they were to seall the entrances and exits, the moisture would be sucked out of the people inside at such a rate that they would instantaneously dehydrate into little piles of dust, just like in that batman movie in the 60s.

Secondly, the many TV screens attached to bit of the ceiling and walls and stuff were advertising the fact that Santa was coming to The Mall in just 5 days. 5 days? Add that to the fact thate the ceiling was plastered with shiny, shiny baubles and pretty lights, presumably to celebrate the Christmas Season. Its the beginning of November for God's sake, people. What's wrong with you? It's not just me that thinks this way. I heard this chap on the telly this morning. He's a bit nuts, but he has a point.

Thirdly (wait for it...) I was astonished by the number of defeated, broken men following their wives/girlfriends around the shops wearing expressions that suggested that the worst thing in the world had just happened (and that contrary to popular belief, it had not happened at sea) and laden like mules with bags and bags of useless tat in plastic bags while their so called 'better halves' were fannying around, unladen, I might add, looking at more usless tat with which they could burden their men. One in particular sticks in my mind - the poor sod was simultaneously pushing a pram and holding several bags with one hand whilst holding onto a horrible, misbehaving brat with the other. The Missus was flouncing along ahead of him, gaily having a nice chat with someone (either her mother or a member of her coven) on her mobile phone.



Makes me glad I'm single. Kinda. I miss the sex, though.

Anyway. Final bit coming up.

Went to the movies with the Stead this evening. Saw Sky High. The movie was ok, but the two kids who sat next to us and chatted their way through the film weren't. One of them kicked the Stead in the shin on the way out. He almost died on the spot, but I managed to restrain Stead's braining arm...

Firework Night

Yay. Fireworks are cool.

Oddly, my cat seems to think so too. Rather than cowering under a table or whatnot, he's hanging around on the windowsill watching
the proceedings with great interest.

He's weird...

Heath Ledger

So I was wandering down from the bus stop this morning and noticed a poster for Terry Gilliam’s new movie, The Brothers Grimm. One of the stars of the movie is a chap called Heath Ledger who you may recall from such stellar movies as A Knight’s Tale and… er… well I can’t think of any others.



Anyway, I got to thinking… what sort of name is Heath? As far as I’m aware it’s just a large patch of open scrubland. So, I looked it up on dictionary.com as you do, and sure enough:

Any of various usually low-growing shrubs of the genus Erica and related genera, native to Europe and South Africa and having small evergreen leaves and small, colorful, urn-shaped flowers. Also called heather.
An extensive tract of uncultivated open land covered with herbage and low shrubs; a moor.

So Heath’s parents either named him after a plant, which is frankly girlie, or they named him after a bit of land. Which is just odd. I suspect, they simply made it up cos they thought it sounded nice.

As for his surname…

Well, anyway. That was my thought for the day. A bit wasted really wasn't it...

Conned

So the extensive demolition work to make way for the new Merchant’s Quarter has finally begun in Bristol this week and I must say that I’m disappointed. I was expecting wrecking balls and dynamite and all sorts of exciting destructive stuff, yet what did I see when I left the office last night?



A JCB poking at the multi storey car park across the road. No dramatic explosions. No huge ton weights trashing into the side of it throwing debris everywhere. A JCB poking at it, presumably until it gets annoyed and falls down of it’s own accord.

The council has let me down in a big way. Yet despite this, I know that they’re simply going to turn around to me and say that they couldn’t demolish the car park with a wrecking ball or dynamite, because there is a block of student flats immediately next door. This, apparently causes some sort of obstacle to the obviously more efficient and entertaining method of demolition.

Well, surprise surprise, I have a differing opinion on this subject. They’re student flats. So one has to ask the question… who cares?!?

Oh well.

I may go and ask the nice JCB driver if I can have a go with his big poking thing. It kinda looks like fun.

Er…

I may not phrase it quite like that!

Bagels and Bacon

So, on the recommendation of the nice dinner lady in the canteen this morning, I had a toasted bagel with butter, brown sauce and bacon.

It was very tasty, but I couldn't help feeling oddly guilty as I ate it. Bagels and bacon ain't exactly... kosher.

Names

So there's this girl in my office who recently got married, but didn't take the name of her husband. When asked why, she simply gets huffy and mutters about it being old fashioned. She also gets the hump when you refer to her as a Mrs. It's Ms.

It kinda begs the question... why bother getting married in the first place? There aren't any tax advantages any more, she certainly didn't get married for religious reasons and it's not like it's a respectability thing any more. (I suspect it was more for the dress and the attention... but that's my opinion)

So, I tried to reason with her. Who's surname were their kids (should they have any) going to adopt.

It's going to be hyphenated, she told me (unneccesarily hyphenated names are a load of old pretention twaddle, by the way. Trust me!).

So... being the pedantic basserd that I am, I took this waaaay to far. What if everyone did this. The hyphenation would double with every generation. So you'd end up with this situation:

G1: John Smith
G2: John Smith-Jones
G3: John Smith-Jones-Bailey-Thompson
G4: John Smith-Jones-Bailey-Thompson-Pilkington-Brown-Blair-Jarvis

As you can see, it doesn't take long for it to get out of hand. And it's only a matter of time before you come across someone who's ancestor also married a Smith-Jones. Do you then double up the combos, so you'd have John Smith^2-Jones^2-Bailey-Thompson-Plikington-Brown-Blair^3-Jarvis-Alcock -Steadman-Fisher^2...?

Oh... the inanities that come out of my head. You all wish you were as inane as me. You know you do...

Right. That's it! Christmas is bloody cancelled!

I've just walked through the centre of Bristol, where I witnessed the erection (yes, I can say erection cos I'm the king!) of a bloody great effin' Christmas tree.

So it's now time for my annual rant and moan about effin Christmas being celebrated for effin months before the effin event. Effers.

Sod it, I can't be bothered.

Dumb Assedness

BBC Article:

Computer terms 'confuse workers'

Most office workers find computer jargon as difficult to understand as a foreign language, a survey suggests.

Three quarters of workers waste more than an hour a week deciphering what a technical term means, the poll found.

Phrases like jpeg, java script and cookies are among the problem terms highlighted by Computer People.

The recruitment firm, which questioned 1,500 workers, says effective IT professionals "understand the need to tailor their levels of jargon".

My opinion... Go on guess. That's right. If these people are too lazy (or dumb) to learn the basics of the tools that they use every day, then maybe they should consider a career change. As far as I'm concerned, that's like a car mechanic saying 'I don't know what a sparkplug is' or a chippie saying 'A saw? What's that?'.

I have people in my office who simply refuse to learn how to sort a column in excel, or print double sided or use the tab key in word rather than lots of spaces. Doesn't matter how often I show them this stuff, it just slides right off em.

I don't subscribe to this 'I'm just not a computer person' gibberish that they spout when you challenge them with it. And I definitely don't appreciate the ones that say 'Well if they'd train me...' Frankly I've had almost no IT training at all in my life. I once went on a Visual Basic course only to find that I already knew everything they tried to teach me. I'm entirely self taught.

And this hour a week to decipher technical terms like cookie or jpeg means? If the numpties just typed em into the help search, they'd find out in about 5 seconds.

I'm not even tech support. I do a little bit of developing and tinkering and stuff, but mostly I read e-mails sleep through tele-conferences and go to meetings. I'm still, apparently, the most qualified person to repair everyone's computers and answer their questions, despite that fact that we have an IT helpdesk and an on-site engineer.

I love it when people walk up to me and start the conversation with 'You're a techie person, aren't you..?' Makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside.

we have a nice little intranet based system at work that allows you to reactivate your network password if you get locked out. It works really well and is nice and quick and easy to use... if you bother to take the 10 seconds to register for it.

There was a lovely e-mail that went round about a year ago, which explained it all, nice and simply, told you how to register and suggested that you do it as soon as possible.

Guess who the only person to bother registering was. Go on guess.

On of the guys down the end of the office locked himself out after his 2 week break this morning. Since it's before 8am, the IT helpdesk isn't open (actually 8am is just their official opening time - you'd be lucky to get an answer before 8.30) so he was cussing and moaning because he couldn't get his password reset.

So I said... "Why don't you use the password reset system on the intranet?"

"The what?" he asked, with a confused expression on his face.

"The password reset system," I explained, "that allows you to reset your password with great ease and even greater speed without having to involve the IT helpdesk. It was set up for just this scenario."

Needless to say, when he received the e-mail about a year ago, not to mention the monthly 'reminder' mails that we've had since then, he's simply hit the delete key, rather than actually read it. The result being that he now has to twiddle his thumbs at his desk until the IT helpdesk opens...

His colleague who had similarly disregarded the e-mails (to the point that he was insistent that they never existed) read up on the system this morning on my insistence. His reaction? "Well I have to fill out a form. I don't have the time."

He then spent half an hour at the opposite end of the office looking at someone's holiday snaps.

No sympathy. No patience. Sorry.

There. Rant over for the day!

Handbag Arm Syndrome

I need something explained to me.

What is it with girls and ‘handbag arms’? Why do girls feel the need to wave their non-handbag bearing arm around as they walk?

I was walking through town yesterday lunchtime and witnessed a particularly spectacular and dangerous example of this. This rather short, squat girl was walking ahead of me. Her right arm was clamped down on her handbag, whilst the other appeared to be spasming. It’s possible that it wasn’t actually attached to her body and was, in fact, independently mobile. Its movement ranged from flopping around like a fish next to her waist to being extended perpendicularly at almost 90 degrees from her body. At times it appeared to be the subject of some form of electro-shock therapy. Had she been a tall person, passers-by may well have been in danger of losing eyes or teeth. As it was she almost punched several passing blokes in the groin with it.

So… those members of the female persuasion, perhaps you could explain this arm-flailing requirement to me. As for the blokes... well... just talk amongst yourselves for a bit!

Fifty Seven anna Half Kilos

I know, I know. All this talk of weight training is intensely dull and no-one else gives a monkey's. But I'm gonna write about it anyway.

Last night we upped the weights to 57.5 kilos. Hard work, that. Unfortunately, while the banch pressing isn't presenting too much of a problem, I'm having a little problem with the tendons in my forearms that's preventing me from doing my curls for a week or so.

Bugrit.

Citizen's Arrest

So the Stead and I were heading back to my gaffe in his new works van. We were on the Ring Road at Filton, when we noticed that the car in front was veering all over the road. That stretch is a dual carriageway and this guy was crossing the line than wavering back and forth and doing it all really slowly.

So we pulled up next to him at the traffic lights and wound down the window. The driver was an old guy and was kinda lolling in the drivers seat.

Straight to the point, Stead asked the guy "Are you drunk?"

The driver kinda looked at us blearily and than said "Yes."

So Stead puts on his stern expression (which is really scary, cos he juts his jaw out and his eyebrows do this funny joining up thing), waves his finger pointedly and says "Pull over right now. I'm gonna do a Citizens arrest".

The guy was clearly unimpressed because when the lights turned green, he just pulled away and carried on taking up both lanes all the way down a major A road.

So we followed at a distance, and I called the police, who told me they'd send a car over. Never heard anything after that. I want closure.

Anyway. Here's the interesting part. I was somewhat dubious of Stead's power to make a legal citizen's arrest, so I've checked it out. A handy BBC site says:

The right to make a citizen’s arrest comes under section 3(1) of the Criminal Law Act 1967 which says:

"A person may use such force as is reasonable in the circumstances in the prevention of crime, or in effecting or assisting in the lawful arrest of offenders or suspected offenders or of persons unlawfully at large."

The crime must be a ‘serious offence’, i.e. one which could potentially result in a prison sentence of five years or more. So drink-driving would not qualify as it has a maximum prison sentence of six months but stealing would because it can result in a long prison sentence.

This is backed up by a couple of other site's I've checked out, too. So... it seems that had he arrested the guy, it would have been an unlawful arrest. And the drunk guy could have sued him. So now you know. Don't try and arrest drink drivers!

Oddly, however, you can get him to pull over and take his keys, as that doesn't count as an offence as you haven't deprived him of his liberty.

You learn something new every day!

55 Kilos. Woohoo

So the good news is that the Stead and I are now bench-pressing 55 kilos. Woohoo. It may not be the most kilos ever bench pressed in the world, but it's certainly pretty good progress for us! Next stop... 60 kilos!

Lightening and Ladders

So last night we had a reasonably spectacular (for Bristol) thunder storm with lovely forked lightening and everything. And while the storm was raging around me I wondered what the best thing I could do was. And then I thought: I know, I’ll head down to B&Q with Stead and we’ll buy a really long, super-conductive aluminium ladder! What could possibly go wrong?

Actually nothing did. But it’s the thought that counts!

40 Minute Parking

I went to Dartmouth on Sunday, to visit my parents. Most entertaining, it was. Particularly the bit where mum made dad drive around Dartmouth for almost 40 minutes looking for a parking space.

Not much else to tell, really.

Shuttle

I saw live footage of the shuttle being flown back to Florida over the weekend. It was very cool.

Looks like they watched Blue Peter the night before they flew... They've stuck bits of washing up liquid bottles to the back of the shuttle. I bet they did it with sticky backed plastic!

I wonder how they smuggled it though customs...


"Excuse me, sir. Do you have anything to declare?"

"Er... no, Officer."

"Well, can you explain that suspicious shuttle shaped bulge in your pocket, sir?"

"Um... I'm just pleased to see you..."

Sarcastic Rail Announcers

We had an unusually sarcastic announcer on the train to Brum yesterday.

She came on to tell us about the range of food and drinks available from the buffet car. After going through the usual welcome spiel, she went on to extoll in detail the virtues of the bacon baguettes, telling us that she had ditched the supply of tomato ketchup at the last station on the basis that it wasn't as tasty as brown sauce then announced that we were more than welcome to drop in for a nice hot chocolate topped with cream and whatever little sprinkles we fancied. She finished up by explaining that the buffet car was located in the centre of the train, and that if we weren't sure where that was in relation to where we were sitting than we should have been paying more attention when we were getting on the train.

Laughed, I did.

My name is Darren and I am a Numpty

Yes, yes. I know. You all figured that out already. But I only realised this evening that I just plain shouldn't be allowed out on my own!

I had to pop over to Stead's this evening to do a bit of heavy lifting. Having got changed, I decided that I wouldn't need my wallet, so I left it on the bed.

Having done my little weight training session, I headed back home, but along the way decided to pick up a few things from Tesco. I parked up, wandered in, filled a basket with stuff and went to the ceckout to pay, carefully selecting the one with the most attractive girl (alright, alright she was a bit yound for me - but a guy can dream can't he?). It was only after I had laid out all of my stuff on the little conveyor belt that I remembered the location of my means of payment.

Redfaced, I explained my predicament to the attractive girl at the checkout. It was at this point that something truly amazing happened!

It seems that Tesco have a process for dealing with utter morons who leave their wallets at home. They scan all your goods, bag em up, then put them to one side, giving you a little receipt with a barcode on. You can then rush home, grab your wallet, come back and pay without all that tedious mucking about holding up the queue while someone comes and gets rid of your pile of stuff.

Hooray for Tesco.

As a punishment for my lack of brain activity however, you may all refer to me in a derogatory fashion... preferably calling my mental capacity into question. I particularly encourage the use of phrases such as 'dumb f*ck', 'f*ckwit' and 'total f*cking moron'.

Survey Results

Hmm.

Whilst browsing the interweb (whilst I should have been working) I came across this little gem of an article on the Guardian Website.

Stead won't be happy!

Twister!

Here is the front page of today's Bristol evening Post:



Note the dramatic headline, "TWISTER", implying imminent terrifying danger from the horrific tornado pictured above it. Scary, scary stuff.

The fact that this demonstration of the awesome and terrible power of mother nature went entirely unnoticed by the majority of the citizens of Bristol seems to have been disregarded in the scramble to create a sensational headline.

The fact that, on closer examination of said photo, this demonstration of the awesome and terrible power of mother nature appears to be... well... very small and very high also appears not to be a factor in the selection of the main news item of the day.

My considered opinion is that by simple chance, someone with a camera happened to be looking up at the time and was lucky enough to have snapped off a decent photo of this demonstration of the awesome and terrible power of mother nature and e-mailed it in to the Evening Post. Due to a lack of the usual agricultural issues to report (normally in the vein of 'MAD COW HORROR: Famer Giles left the gate to his field open and one of his cows escaped, causing a three car tailback on a minor country lane' or 'TRACTOR TERROR: A slow moving tractor causes minor delays of B-Road') this quality paper decides to use the front page to report... THE WEATHER!

The byline can't be read on the image above, but I suspect it goes something like this: "TWISTER: Freak weather phenomenon of Bristol causes no problems and goes largely unnoticed by residents." Pretty sharp reporting right there!
Our American friends could learn a thing or two about Twisters. Those Floridians make such a fuss about 'em, but we know the truth! Have another cup of tea.

This is the same newspaper that a few months ago headlined with "OUR BED IS TOO HOT!" A moving human interest piece about a couple who found their bed to be too warm and had to spend the night in their armchairs.

Computer Skills For All

Saw this on the BBC site this morning.

Every adult in Scotland is being offered up to £100 to develop and improve their computer skills.

The funding forms part of a Scottish Executive drive to extend learning.

The Individual Learning Account (ILA) Scotland scheme offers low income learners up to £200 a year for courses to help them get back into work.

This has now been extended to provide funding of up to £100 a year for basic information technology training to everyone in Scotland over 18.

Not very interesting in itself, but it reminded me of an anecdote from a couple of years ago. Not a very interesting one, but I’m going to share it with you all the same - and because you’re bored, I just know you’re gonna read it anyway, interesting or not.

Apparently, a few years ago, the government were pushing a similar initiative to provide basic computer training and ‘certification’. The training was outsourced to local IT training companies. Anyway, one evening, I had a knock on the door. Upon answering I discovered a small man who told me all about this initiative.

"Do you have any IT qualifications?" he asked.

"As it happens, no." I replied. "However as I do a fair amount of database design in my job I’m not sure your services are really my cup of tea."

"So you have no certificates?" he said.

"Er… no," I responded. "but as I implied in my previous statement, my IT skills are such that your services really aren’t for me."

"The government have put this money aside for you," the salesman informed me. "You don’t want to waste that money, do you?"

"No no." I countered. "The government have put this money aside for people who have poor or non-existent IT skills and wish to acquire a piece of paper that that tells the bearer that they are certified to press the ‘on’ button on their computer and perhaps use that minor ‘qualification’ to graduate from working on the shop floor or driving the works van, to working in the office."

"Your chances of getting an IT job are greatly improved with a certificate such as this."

Up until this point, I had attempted to be reasonably amicable and only slightly sarcastic. It was clear from this statement, however, that this irritating little man was determined to miss my point, even if I physically used it to gouge his eyes out. He therefore raised himself in my estimation from minor annoyance to full blown legitimate target for whatever mockery, scorn or derision I felt necessary to belittle him and make him go away with his tail between his legs.

"Little man," I began (for he was very short), "I don’t consider myself to be a computer expert, but clearly my understanding of both computers and the world we live in eclipses yours in a way that can only be described as … and I choose my words carefully here… ‘total’." In case he continued to miss the point, I drove it in further. "At my advanced level of society - which, it is painfully obvious to me is far, far higher than yours given that I have a comfortable yet challenging and financially rewarding office job and you are traipsing around, desperately knocking on doors in the rain on a Wednesday evening – any attempt to quote some scrappy government funded numpty’s guide to what is laughingly called ‘Information Technology’ would be ridiculed beyond measure."

He left shortly after I finished talking.

Actually, I may have recalled the incident with more malice than it actually had. I’m generally not that mean to people in person. But rest assured, that I was very, very sarcastic.

I should point out, however, that I had no intention to belittle what is actually a very worthy scheme. I was simply being mean to the salesman on my doorstep as is my fundamental human right!

Breakfast

So I got up this morning and wandered downstairs in search of some breakfast. I made myself a bowl of muesli, but was scuppered when I found I had no milk. So I reverted to my contingency plan... toast. Sadly, I was once again foiled - this time by the lack of butter.

Dammit. Without milk I can't even make myself a nice cup of tea. I may die.

The only thing left to eat in the house is a solitary mini-tub of cookies and cream haagen-dasz ice cream. I can't have that for breakfast... can I?

War of the Worlds

The visuals were great. Tom as usual was pretty good. It was a refreshing change to have a protagonist who wasn't heroic at all - only interested in his own and his family's survival.

Speilberg manages to prove once again that he's one of the best directors in the world, setting us up for the money shot as the first tripod bursts out of the ground and starts zapping people. Pretty amazing sfx right there!

It was nice that they didn't feel the need to explain everything in painful detail. I knew everything I needed to know and inferred the rest. I realise there are people out there who need this stuff rammed down their throat, but most of the time it's unneccessary and wastes valuable screen-time.

Overall, I was a little bit disappointed though. Visuals aside, I don't think there's enough meat on it to stand up to repeated viewing. Ho hum.

Lost in Bristol

I have just returned from a most enjoyable curry night with a select number of my workmates, culminating in an impromptu session in the house of one of my uberbosses..

It is with great shame that I must report that, on the return journey from Boss' house to the car, which was parked outside the Indian, we got untterly, utterly lost, eventually stumbling upon the right road by sheer luck. What should have been a 5 minute walk, turned into a 25 minute trek trhough the posh wildlands of Redland.

The map below shows, in blue, the simple route that we should have taken. In red, you will see my best estimate for the route that we did, in fact take.



The worst part of it was, as all of us drove seperately, not one of us had anything to drink that night. We got lost, whilst sober.

I am ashamed. Mock me if you must...

Hanging Doors

I discovered on Saturday that hanging doors is... er... really fun.

Actually it wasn't as difficult as I'd imagined. Our first attempt, a new bathroom door in the Stead's house was 100% sucessful with no major disasters at all. Apparently, it's a one man job. Bah.

Sun, sun, sun, sun, sun, sun... RAIN! THUNDER!! LIGHTENING!!!

After nearly 3 weeks of glorious sunshine, the weather has finally broken. The BBC weather forecast prepared me for this, but like a true Brit, I didn't take it seriously. A little bit of rain, I thought. It ain't gonna be much, I thought. After all, we've had none at all for weeks. In fact we've had temeratures of 24-30 here in Bristol, which is positively scorching for us!

I was wrong. I woke this morning to a torrential downpour, accompanied by lashings of thunder and lightening.

Lucky I had my brolly, really.

Poor sods at Glastonbury. All that nice weather, and it breaks on the first day of the festival. Bummer.

Batman

I'm a big Batman fan. Always have been. So imagine my delight when they bring out a new Batman movie and it turns out to be great! Unlike the last couple which were a load of old nads!

Batman Begins was dark and brooding and exciting. Christain Bale was well cast in the role. He had a nice different approch to the character - scary and even a bit vicious - that the previous movies did'nt have. In fact there was lots of great casting - Gary Oldman, Michael Caine, Morgan Freeman.

So anyway. Batman Begins Rocks. It's fantastic. Go and see it right now.

(I seem to be liking a lot of movies at the moment. Life is good!)

Beware the Pants-Eating Bunny

In all the excitement and drama of the previous post, I forgot to chronicle the latest escapade of the man-eating bunny that lives in my dining room.
She's devoured many things in her time, curtains, cables, hardback books, the odd small child, but this evening she decided that she was going to steal and consume my underpants.

I should clarify that I was not wearing them at the time. They were on the clothes horse, drying in the dining room.

Bloodletting 2: Bigger, Badder and Bloodier

Oh yeah. It was Bloodletting day today. I actually haven't donated blood since last September 'cos I keep forgetting. I am a bad man!

Anyway - it was a very traumatic experience this time round. After donating the alloted quantity of Dazza Juice (apparently they take 470 ml - just a touch less than a can of coke), they patched me up and sent me off for my cup of tea.

Whereupon, I started bleeding profusely.

Sadly, engrossed as I was in my tea, it took a minute or two for me to notice the spreading stain on my t-shirt, so by the time I got the attention of one of the attending nurses, it all looked somewhat catastrophic!

Still. Lots of tissue later, it all looked hunky dory, and I was about to return to my much deserved cuppa when it all started up again. This time they weren't taking any chances. I now have the most enormous lump of gauze strapped to my arm with industrial strength surgical tape! I ain't looking forward to tearing that off, I can tall ya.

I am apparently, a re-bleeder.



Sadly, it seems I cannot draw hands. Lucky, really that I don't have to draw stuff for a living.

Glastonbury

We went to Glastonbury yesterday. Somewhere I’ve never been. Actually, when I make a sweeping statement like that, my mum usually interjects with ‘Yes you have, we took you when you were 3 months old’. So I shall be more careful with my phrasing: I do not recall ever visiting Glastonbury.

Right, having got semantics out of the way we can get down to business.



Glastonbury itself was actually somewhat bigger than I was expecting. It even has a ‘superstore’, although we never came across it during our visit. The main thing that struck me, however was the plethora of shops that were flogging ‘mystical’ tat. Yes, in any given shoppe (note the spelling) one can purchase mystical spell books, mystical candles, mystical bits of rock, mystical lumps of wood and mystical chunks of plaster-of-paris in the shape of mystical items such as mystical chalices and all the while, you are treated to the overpowering stench of mystical incense sticks. We received many dirty looks form mystical shoppe owners who overheard us slighting their wares.

The Torr itself was quite nice. Not especially high as hills go, but given that its plonked right in the middle of the Somerset Flats, its quite prominent and affords some pretty spectacular views.

I think I may have taken the picture just as the sun popped behind a cloud as it looks a bit murky, but rest assured, it was a gloriously sunny day.

Painting The Town Red

My younger brother, Chris came down from Nottingham to visit me this weekend. I like my little brother. He’s cool and insults me in many new and exciting ways, bringing with him the traditions of the East Midlands. I do, however have to remind him fairly regularly that he is the product of a South Coast upbringing and should therefore not be referring to bread rolls as ‘cobs’ or calling people ‘duck’ (pronounced ‘dook’) and so-on.

Among the many thrilling and exhilarating activities that we engaged in over the weekend was a trip to the clubs and bars of Bristol Centre on Saturday night. Now this, I would point out, is something I would not normally do. In fact as a rule I would avoid it as best I could. There are several reasons for this, among which are the regular stabbings, conversation drowning base-lines and nasty, nasty bulgy bits on girls who should either be wearing clothes that fit, or simply wearing more of them! I’m a bit of a grumpy old man when it comes down to ‘going out on the town’.

Anyway, we persuaded the Stead to drive us into town and made our way into the closest bar – an oddly laid out affair on three levels. After making our way to the top floor we located a table served by a sofa and two very cool leather swivel chairs. Much spinning ensued on the part of Little Bro and myself, until Stead pointed out that spinning in one’s chair was not very cool and was unlikely to attract girls.

After a few minutes of somewhat unhealthy interest in the traffic to and from the gents, we decided that our current position was not affording us a particularly effective view of passing… er… trade, so we decided to move on. Two or three identical bars later, we decided to move away from the Waterfront and head up Corn Street. This was not our best move. The bars there were amazingly busy, many of them having lengthy queues outside. Now, I’ve been in these bars many times, usually at lunchtime or immediately after work and, as venues, they have always struck me as pretty mediocre. Given the amount of business they were doing however, my opinion was clearly wrong. The first bar we went into was so busy that we gave up after half an hour waiting at bar for service (or at least as close to the bar as we could get).

What did work out well for me though was that the next bar we went into was a Wetherspoons which meant that the round I bought (as it was my turn) in there cost less than four quid. Bonus.

I thought I’d finish with a few fashion tips for the ladies from the guru of coterie:

I have nothing against the… er… fuller figure. I would suggest, however that anyone who considers reducing the size of their backside by squeezing into trousers or skirts several sizes to small for them should think again. All it does is push that excess flesh straight up, creating a decidedly unattractive spare tyre effect. Skinny girls can also create exactly the same effect using the same technique and it’s similarly unpleasant.

Speaking of skinny girls… wandering round looking like you have an eating disorder is not attractive and is probably bad for you. Eat more pies.

And finally… belts. Belts are for one thing: Holding your trousers up. They don’t need dangly bits, frills, huge coloured disks, ribbons or shiny metal rings on them. They also shouldn’t be hanging around your arse. In fact, given the natural shape of most girls’ waists, you shouldn’t need the things anyway.

This is Victor Meldrew reporting for the BBC…

In which our hero travels to Andover and learns a valuable lesson about stinging nettles.

My legs hurt. They sting, in fact.

I have spent the best part of this week in Andover on the latest instalment of my management development course. This time around, they had us looking at organisational cultures and building towers out of coloured plastic bits. Terribly exciting stuff.

On day 2, it was decided that a 5-a-side footie match would take place between the end of the working bit and dinner. I did not take part on account of being shite at football and because I didn't bring any suitable kit.

The two 'cohorts' played against each other. It was an exciting, dramatic match and many minor injuries were incurred on each side.

At one point, the ball was kicked at an enormously high velocity out of the pitch, over the 15-foot fence, across the car park (bouncing off the roof of a parked 4-wheel-drive vehicle) and into a large patch of stinging nettles. Being a hero, and also the only person present in long trousers, I volunteered to retrieve it. This, it seems was a big mistake. My trousers provided no protection at all to the awesome power of the stinging nettles. I was in agony for the rest of the evening.

So. My management development course taught me two very important lessons:

One: Organisations structures are not nearly as interesting as you might think; and

Two: Stinging nettles hurt. Lots. Even through trousers.

The Old Doorbell Prank

So, a bunch of kids from my estate decided to try the old 'ring-the-doorbell-and-run-away' trick on me today.

Only thing is, I was sitting in the lounge, looking at them out of the window and watched them walk up the path, heard them ring the doorbell, giggling and then watched them run away across the front of the house. So quite rightly I didn't shift from my comfy spot. They seemed to enjoy it anyway.

Now my point is this. They had a choice of 2 directions to run. Up or down the path. Down would have allowed them an easy escape without me being able to see they had gone, menaing that it's likely that I would have come to the door, thus validating all their hard work and planning. Sadly they chose the latter.

Kids, eh.

Sin City

Sin City has finally been released in the UK. And what a glorious experience it was. Fantastic. I couldn't fault it in any way!

The single best bit... Marv. Perfect. Amazing. So cool.

Go and see it today. Right now! Do it.

Wallpapering The Ceiling

‘Wallpapering the ceiling?’ I hear you cry, ‘Am I reading this right? Wallpaper… on the ceiling? Surely that’s just madness. Insanity, even.’

That’s exactly what I thought when the Stead announced that he wished to put woodchip wallpaper on the ceiling of his hallway. There is a story behind it.

It’s all part of the ongoing Saga Of The House Of Stead. When he moved into his new house, there were ugly beams on the walls and ceiling. When I say ‘beams’, what I mean is nasty bits of brown painted 2x4, replete with 6-inch nails. They were foul. Dire. I would go as far as to say… ‘awful’. Yes, I said ‘awful’.

Anyway, most of them came out of the walls and ceilings without too much hassle, despite the overly large nails. Each beam left a nasty brown stain on the ceiling – a problem that could be easily masked with many layers of paint. Sadly, however, upon removing the very last beam (which had an extra nasty nail in it), Stead managed to create a sizeable hole in his ceiling.

Being a terribly clever bloke, Stead masked this hole by putting a bit of metal gauze, usually employed in the car-repair business, in the hole and used layers of filler to create a new bit of ceiling – which is now probably stronger than the rest of ceiling. This still created the problem, however of an odd looking flat patch on an otherwise stippled ceiling. Too big to be painted over and ignored.

Stead’s suggestion: Let’s put woodchip wallpaper on the ceiling. After a coat of paint, It’ll look just like any stippled ceiling.

I was understandably dubious. Wallpaper on the ceiling sounds like a bad idea. My concern lay around its adhesion to the ceiling and our ability to put it up. And that it’d look like woodchip wallpaper. On the ceiling. The alternative, Stead told me knowingly, was getting the ceiling re-skimmed, which would cost about £300. The wallpaper would cost about £10.

Well, Stead was insistent. So we reached a consensus that went something like ‘Well it’s your ceiling, Stead. If it looks stupid, you’re then one that’s gonna have to look at it every day.’ I thought that was a reasonable statement.

So we spent most of yesterday afternoon putting woodchip wallpaper on the ceiling. And, I have to say, it looks pretty damn good. It went up with no major problems (apart from Stead’s mini-tantrum when the first piece didn’t go quite right) and, despite the lack of paint, doesn’t look bad at all! We have to leave it a few days (i.e. ‘til next weekend) before we can paint it, but I am now confident that it will look very reasonable.

Do you hear that, Stead? I’m conceding your point. Retracting my objections. It would seem that, this time at least, you were right. I suspect this is due to blind luck more than anything else but I am willing to give you this one. Well done.

See you for more painting fun next weekend.

1985

My dad just sent me this rather blurred family photo from 1985:



Clockwise from the top-left: Dad, Mum, Me, Chris, Russ (in a dress).

Damn. I was a good looking kid. Bit...er... sulky there, but good looking! Nice hair. Some things just don't improve with age!

The Rest Of The Weekend

Well. Having assisted Russ with the moving duties, I spent the rest of the weekend at Mum's. Well that's not true. I was so mind numbingly bored (to the point where my brain melted and flowed out of my ears) that I found as many excuses to go out as possible. A quick visit to Vic's mum's (no, there's nothing odd about visiting your ex's mum) and an evening over at Stut's were in order to provide some relief.

Although there was nothing to report from my ex-mother-in-law's (actually, technically not an ex-M.I.L. yet...) the visit to Stut and Dan's was somewhat more interesting.

We popped out to a small pretentious french cafe in Westbourne. That's all it was, a cafe. But it seemed to have a a very high opinion of itself. The waiter had a preposterous accent and appeared to be hard of hearing. My saussicons a la something or other turned out to be sausage and mash, which was fine by me, but the waiter didn't seem to appreciate me asking for Sausage and Mash, or even Sausage a la Mash. Eventually, stubbornly refusing to even attempt to pronounce the unpronouncable, I had to point to the menu. It would seem that I'm not allowed to speak English in my own country. We then had a discussion around our drinks order.

"You want wine?" asked the waiter, frenchly.
"No, thank you" we said.
"The house red is very good," he informed us.
"That's nice. Just a coke, please."
"It is imported from the owner's vinyard in France."
"Very good. Coke, please."
"Just coke?"
"Yes."
"No wine?"
"No."
"Are you sure?"
"Yes. Coke. We're very thirsty, now."
"I shall leave you the wine list in case you change your mind."
"We don't need it." Dan leaned conspiratorially to me, "We don't like the wine here. I can get better in the Offie, later."

Unsurprisingly, the waiter went off in a huff at this point. The service was amazingly slow. We waited about 30 minutes for our meal and it wasn't exactly busy in there. After waiting almost 10 minutes for mayonnaise, Dan eventually had to go to the bar and organise it himself. Meanwhile, the waiter continued to flaunt his pythonesque french accent around the cafe.

After the meal, which was perfectly tasty, we had terrible trouble attracting the attention of the waiter for the bill. Eventually, once again, we had to approach the bar and request it, somewhat curtly. A few minutes later, it was dumped unceremoniously on the table. Having added exactly the right amount of cash - we didn't feel that the accents were quite convincing enough to warrant a tip - the waiter collected our money with a decidedly un-french 'Cheers' and we went on our way.

Another House Move

My Southampton based big brother moved house on Friday. He moved from a dingy flat in Shirley to a brand new posh 'luxury apartment' in Ocean Village. there are a number of reasons for this move, not least of which was his old flatmate's obsession with the massively multiplayer online role playing game 'World of Warcraft'. Apparently he was spending all of his time on it, stopping only to pee and put ready meals in the microwave (but only the sort one can eat whilst playing). His obsession was so bad, it seems, that he started call in sick to work and, worst of all, his parrot died beacuse he 'forgot' to feed it. Well - quite frankly I couldn't live with a guy who puts a computer game over the life of a pet. Russ' concern, however was more practical. He was worried that his flatmate was about to lose his job and therefore his income. Rent was therefore then primary issue. Sadly, the parrot seemed to be more of a laughing point.

Being a kind and dutiful brother, I offered to go down and help him move. My offer was accepted. Not gratefully, I might add, but accepted nonetheless. So I got up bright and early and drove the hundred odd miles from Bristol, to Southampton. The day, however did not go well.

First off, I found myself unable to follow the instructions that Multimap provided. I'm still not sure whether it was me or them, but I found myself utterly utterly lost in the centre of Southampton and had to drive around in circles 'til I saw something I recognised - and given that it's been about 5 years since I last visited the city, it took a while. Eventually, I found my way to a bit I recognised and from there located Russ' flat.

Next problem. They needed to get stuff out of the garage. Unfortunately, there was a nasty old BMW with flat tires parked in the way. So we had to move it by hand. Fortunately the handbrake was also knackered. Garage sorted.

Next, although Russ was... kind of organised, his friend and new flatmate, Dec was not. The half-laden van was driven to his house where we had to pack his stuff and load it into the van. Everything was then taken to Ocean Village where we had to transfer everything via a tiny, tiny lift to the 5th floor. Not only was the lift tiny, but the doors wouldn't stay open for more than about 10 seconds at a time. So whilst manhandling computer desks and other bulky items out of the lift, we were assaulted by the closing doors and subjected to a barrage of barked instructions from the 'Lady of the Lift' who told us repeatedly and in no uncertain terms to stop blocking the doors.

Following that, it was decided that we would drive over to Mum's (about 30 miles away) to collect a couple of chests of drawers and a wardrobe. Which we did. Whilst there, Mum forced us to eat pasty pie and chips. Actually there wasn't much forcing about it. It was about 3 o'clock by this time and I for one hadn't eaten since about 6am. The pie was foul and the chips were greasy and horrible. But when you're hungry, you're hungry.

Before leaving for Southampton again, Russ decided that we still had to take some old furniture from the old flat to the tip. This was something of a concern as we were 30-40 minutes from the flat, a further 20 from the tip and it was getting on for 4 o'clock. Now I don't know about Southampton, but here in Bristol, the tips close at 4.30 on the basis that if they closed any later then people would have time to actually use them after work which would generate... work! Anyway. Turns out that the tip closes at 5.30 in Southampton, so we made it... just.

Anyway. At the end of the day, Russ and his mates decided that is was necessary to go to see Star wars. They had in fact booked tickets in advance for themselves, which was nice. I, however had not been factored into their plans. So an additional ticket was required. Fortunately, when they block-booked their tickets, there was one seat left on the end of the row that had not been booked, so I was able to purchase a ticket. Hooray.

The upshot of the day was that I left home at about 7am to do lots of heavy lifting for my brother. Not only did he fail to buy me any food (I though it was a accepted that when you spend the day doing physical labour for someone free of charge, they paid for your tea) but he also failed to say the magic 'Thank you'. not that this surprises me.

As a footnote to this story, I had an interesting discussion with Russ, where he tried to convince me that his knackered old 'K' reg BMW was better than a brand new Ford Focus.

"My car is more fun to drive," he said. "The Focus practically drives for you. It's boring."
"Er. Okay," I said. "By 'fun', presumably you mean that you have no power steering or ABS and you enjoy the thrill of the risk inherent in driving without airbags."
"And," he told me, "the suspension is all soft on a Focus. You can't 'fee' the road."
"Hmmm," I mused as the knackered old BMW shuddered across another slightly bumpy section of road, making my teeth clatter together painfully. "You don't think that the sensation I'm feeling now has something to do with your knackered shock absorbers. Oh. Did we stall?"

Needless to say, when I finally get my promotion and am faced with a choice of company car, it won't be a knackered old K reg BMW I'll be choosing...

Revenge of the Sith

Thursday 19th May

Well, I went to see the new Star Wars movie. What a great movie. Now before anyone shouts me down and declares me a fool for enjoying a movie with dodgy acting and a hackneyed plot that relies far too much on special effects, I'd like to explain in simple terms just why I thought it was a great movie: I was entertained for 2 hours. Yes, that's it. No deep and meaningful discussion of it's complex and intriguing plot or it's overal deep meaningfulness as a reflection of he current state of the world. A movie is only good if it entertains you for it's duration - which it did. Lots of cool lightsabre swinging, some great maniacal giggling from the bad guy, more lightsabres, a spectacular space battle, yet more lightsabres and finally, a monty python sketch (if you don't get that last bit, try watching Monty Python and the Holy Grail and then the end of Revenge of the Sith again. It'll come to you).

The single best part of the evening - the part that made the whole deal sweeter for me was that I didn't pay for the tickets. Not even slightly. Ol' TA Temp made good with his promise to provide free tickets. There was a bit of an issue when we turned up with tickets that showed a price of £0.00. The monkey on the door used his walkie talkie to call over the manager, who attempted to interrogate us over how we obtained the tickets.

"Who gave you these tickets?" he demanded.
"One of my workmates," I replied.
"We've had to sack 3 people over this and we need to know who gave you the tickets," insisted the Manager.
"Well done," said I. "Given that he doesn't work here, his name's hardly going to mean anything to you."
"And," the Stead interjected, "we wouldn't tell you anyway."
"Um," countered the Manager, obviously more used to dealing with compliant monkey-like chavs than people of great intellect and charisma like the Stead and I.
"Look at it this way," I suggested, "As far as I'm concerned, these tickets have been obtained legitimately. Either you're going to let us in or not, so you'd better make a decision. Prefereably," I added hastily, "before the film starts."
"Er..." stated the Manager, confident in the quality of his argument.
"I don't think I like it here, it's a dump." mused Stead before unleashing his ultimate doomsday weapon: "If you don't let us in, you won't be getting our business again."

Well that did it. In these customer-focussed, customer-centric and more importantly, profit-maximising days, the thought of having to explain to his boss why he turned away 2 customers, even if it was for having dodgy tickets, was just too much. In we went without further ado.

And it was great.

Episode 60 Something: The Numpty Strikes Back

Oh yes. Remember that key-loss episode a few months ago? Well now I can go one better.

I had a plan last night. A cunning plan. So cunning, in fact that you could tie a piece of string to it and use it as a kite. Yes, really. It was really that cunning.

The plan was this: Go to Woolies for Dude and a DVD

Stead was in London until 2.30. He was then planning to catch the train home, arrive back in Bristol at around 4.30 and return to his house, where he would get changed.

I was in the office as normal. I planned to return home at the normal time, returning at round 5pm, whereupon I, too would get changed. I then planned to do my 'training', phone the 'Dude' (remember him?), nip over to Stead's to pick him up, collect said Dude at 7.30 and head over to the Woolie's where we would rendezvous with the Vicster and, obviously, the Woolies.

A stellar plan. Excelling in it's simplicity.

Sadly it all went horribly wrong. And here's how.

At around 5pm, I received a call from Stead, who was still in London. "I'm not gonna be back 'til 7.30," he whined.

Ok. A minor setback. But no biggie. I'll get Vic to pick up the Dude. Of course, that means nipping over to her house to provide cash. Free cuppa. No problem. I'll just be picking Stead up a little later.

Whilst at the Vicster's however, my cleverly reorganised plans came crashing down around me. At around 6.10 he was on the phone again. "C*ck!" he exclaimed. I feel it's important to quote him exactly at this point. Sorry if it gets offensive. "C*ck," he said again, before following up with a "C*ckweasels!".

There was obviously something he needed to get of his chest.

"I'm on the train," he told me (I'm not quoting any more - this is kinda from memory and may or may not be accurate). "I've left my c*cking keys in London. I can't get into my car or my house."

"No problem," says I. "You were clever enough to instigate a contingency plan for this very reason, a few months ago. I have a set of keys for your house in my kitchen drawer." Confident that all would be well, I set off to collect him from the station (a little earlier than planned).

Upon reaching my house, it became obvious that Stead's contingency plan had on weak point.

Me.

I'm positive that I put the keys in my kitchen drawer. That's where all the keys go. All of them. My mothers keys are in there. My spare car keys are in there. My Gran's key, the window keys, the gerden box padlock keys... yup. They're all in there too. there were even a few unidentified keys squirreled away at the back. But Stead's. Not a chance.

So. Unable to access either Stead's house or his car until at least Friday, it became neccessary to accomodate him at my house. A sleepover, if you will. Sadly, he had only the clothes in which he was dressed. No change of underwear, no toiletries. Nothing. So - in true bloke style, a mad dash to Marks & Spencer ensured, whereupon a new shirt, socks, underpants, toothbrush, razor etc were purchased.

We finally arrived at the Woolies' just 20 minutes late. Not bad. We watched The Bourne Supremacy, which was pretty good and had a very cool car chase. Much pizza, tea, beer and cola products were consumed and a good time was had by all.

Interesting development on the free Star Wars ticket front yesterday, as well. Simon the Temp - who promised me a ticket for tonight's show right before he got sacked, and then came up with the goods like a true hero - phoned me to say that he was in Nottingham. Training with the TA for his trip to Kabul (although where you get desert training in Nottingham is beyond me). Anyway the upshot is that he can't make it tonight. But, star that he is, he's getting a mate to drop the ticket into the office some time this morning. So hopefully I will have a spare (and more importantly, FREE) ticket to Star Wars which i can give to Stead to make up for the key issue.

It's gonna be great.

An Update

Sadly little of interest had occured over the past few days, so this post may be slightly dull. I shall attempt to spice it up somewhat by adding a teaspoonful of my sparkling wit and humour and a dash of... er cayenne pepper.

Actually - something of mild interest happened on tuesday or wednesday night. I forget which. Having popped to the cinema with a couple of the guys from work, they came back to my house for a post movie cuppa. One of them, who shall remain nameless, decided that she wanted to cuddle the rabbit.

This, as you may or may not be aware is something of a dangerous proposition as Bitsy is a biter. I have many scars. Anyway - having been duly warned about the danger of death by pointy rodent teeth, the rabbit fancier promtly stuck her hand in front of Bitsy's inbuilt Weapons of Mass Destruction and suffered the inevitable injury. It bled. A lot. Apparently it was still bleeding the following morning!

Other exciting things that have happened to me. Hmmm.

Oh, yes. We had a temp in the office. Nice guy, memeber of the TA, but absolutely bloody useless. But we kept him round for ages. Anyway, he said he's be able to get hold of free tickes to the new Star Wars movie on the 19th. Very cool. Sadly he managed to get himself sacked a couple of weeks ago, so I kinda thought that was that. I wasn't overly concerned.

Well - he turned up at the office yesterday with my ticket. Good man!

Umm.

Played pool last night. I lost. It was embarrasing. Stead had some amazing lucky shots. There was jam all over the table. I snapped a picture of him in action with my phone:



Well, I think that's it. Nothing further to report. I shall be assisting Stead with the ongoing decoration of his residence and the disposal of a load of junk into a skip on Saturday. It's gonna be great.

Test

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I'm just trying a thing. I'm posting this as a multimedia message from my phone. Not sure how (if at all) it'll turn out.

The picture, incidentally is of the top of my Dangermouse pencil. It was sent to me by one of my workmates, who kidnapped him a week or two ago. In order to secure his well-being and release all I had to do was admit that girls are better than boys.

Alas... DM remains missing.

Today marks the first day this year where I have elected to leave my coat at home. It was warm and sunny when I left the house.

Looking out of the window now, I'm starting to regret it...

In which Stead gets promoted, pizza is eaten and the use of the word 'Dude' is contested. Oh, and there was something about an election...

Congratulations are in order for my man, Stead. After months of hard work, boss-baiting and general arse-licking (which I hear he really enjoys), he's finally got the promotion he's been angling for. That means a decent pay rise and, more importantly, A COMPANY CAR!!! You may recall that he's been driving a Nissan Micra around for a couple of years, now. That's pretty bad, even by my standards.

So, yeah. As of Monday(ish) he'll be one grade ahead of me. Doesn't mean much in the grand scheme of things, since we don't work in the same part of the organisation, but I feel sure that he will take the opportunity to rub my nose in it as often as is sub-humanly possible. For my part, I will remind him that I, at least own my own car (could have planned that sentence better) and his is, at best, borrowed from the company. Which makes him some sort of sponger. A really limp one, I expect.

Anyway. Those best laid plans. (There's a great Eddie Izzard sketch about best laid plans... but I digress) Stead phoned me up on the way home to give me his amazing news. After his initial confusion about the amount of background noise the public transport on which I was travelling (the concept of which he is unfamiliar with), he soon got down to the important business:

"Dude," he said, "is on me tonight."

Now. Before I go on, I know how that phrase must have looked to those people who are unfamiliar with our use of the word 'Dude'. Pretty damn odd, I should think. I shall explain:

'Dude' is, of course used in place of 'Mate', 'Buddy' or 'Pal' in our circles. It is also used however , in place of 'Pizza'.

'Why?' I hear you ask. 'Why in God's name would you call pizza 'Dude'?'

Well there it is. Pizza Dude. The man who delivers the pizza is the 'Pizza Dude'. Hence, in our warped little minds, 'Dude' equates to pizza. So the guy who delivers the dude, is known as the 'Dude Dude'. Only we get our dude from the dude van by Tesco, which doesn't deliver. So we, as Dudes have to go to the Dude Dude to get the dude ourselves.

So that's sorted then. Clear? Good. I shall continue with my anecdote.

Fantastic. Someone's buying me dinner. I had a nice tuna salad lined up for my tea but, Dude - well that kinda wins hands down. And it's only right that the Stead, who now earns some grands more than me and gets to borrow a car from the company should pay. Only, and here's the kicker, when the time came to hand over the cash, Mr Now-I-Earn-Mega-Bucks-And-Have-A-Considerably-Better-Car-Than-You announced that he had forgotten his wallet.

So there it is. The type of person that our Stead is. Basically a sponging scumbag.

Seriously though... There's no-one more deserving of a Band 4 than my man, Stead. Not only does he actually do some work when he gets to the office, but he does it amazingly well. Congratulations, Dude.

There was something else as well. I'm sure there was. Something really important. But it slips my mind.

Oh yeah. That election business. I trust all you UK readers went out and voted. If you did, whatever your political views... well done. You've done your civic duty and you should be proud of your contribution to the wonderful thing that is Democracy. If not, and you don't have an amazingly good reason... well, quite frankly you don't deserve a government. You're obviously shite or intellectually stunted and should bloody well sod off.

You'd be proud...

Well... it kinda depends on how easily impressed you are.

My morning shower was cut short by the insistent ringing of my phone. At 6.15 in the morning, I ask you.

Anyway... me good mate Woodsie was on the other end, wondering if I wanted a lift in this morning. I considered it for about a picosecond (carefully weighing the pros and cons of waiting in the rain to share a damp uncomfortable bus with 40 odd people, at least 2 of which are desperate to share their cold/cough/other ailment with me against a comfortable ride to town in a nice warm car) before stating 'Yes'.

The down-side of accepting the generous offer of a lift was encapsulated in the phrase 'Ok, mate. We're leaving now. See you in a couple of minutes.'

So... there's me - nekkid, still wet, unshaven, unbreakfasted, even. With about 3 minutes (which co-incidentally is the time it takes a Vauxhall Zafira to cover the 3 miles between Woodsie's house and mine) to dry myself, shave, brush my teeth, dress and be out the front of the house.

I made it.

Just.

All Night Gaming

I think I must be officially addicted to City of Heroes.

Me, Stead and the very cool people in our SuperGroup, The Jam Busters, decided to do a Task force last night. We started shortly after 4pm and finished at... er.. about 2 in the morning. It was bad.

And we never beat the vicious bad guy (guyette) at the end of the mission, either.

I need closure, dammit!

HHGTTG

Heh. Went to see it today. What can I say? Very cool. Stop whatever you're doing and go see it right now. Yes... NOW!

Thunderbolts and Lightening...

...Very Very Frightening.

Something that's always struck me a mildly amusing is the attitude that people in Bristol have towards Thunder and Lightening.

During the 5 years I have been in this strange little city, I have not experienced a single thunderstorm. Not one. Oh, there has been the odd rumble of thunder and an occasional flash of lightening. But no real storms. They ususally last about... oh 10 seconds. At most.

After we've had one of these 'storms' I hear people in the office saying things like 'Did you hear the storm last night?'. and 'I couldn't sleep beacause of all the thunder' and so-on.

Laugh, I do.

These people don't know what a thunderstorm is.

Now... when I lived on the sunny south coast, we had half decent thunderstorms. Ones that lasted more than 10 seconds and gave you plenty of rumble for your buck. Theys loiter around the solent, bouncing backwards and forwards between the Isle of Wight and and mainland all bloody night, sometimes. Right proper forked stuff 'n all.

My point? I have to have a point? Oh all right then.

Well we had a bit of a storm last night. It lasted about half an hour. And it was very cool. A pretty constant stobe effect accompanied by the sound of someone dropping wardrobes down the stairs. It was great.

I wouldn't be surprised, however if many people failed to come to work on Tuesday on account of the Apocalypse happening last night.

Personality Profiling

So... I've spent the last 3 days on the second part of my Leadership course. Lordy, I'm knackered now. It's nbot that we did much physical stuff, but there was lots of stuff to take in, and when you're at it from about 8 in the morning 'til 10 at night it kinda humps yer noggin.

Anyway. The most important thing I got out of it was an assessment of my personality, Myers-Briggs style. I am, you will be profoundly pleased to discover, an ESTP. Apparently this means that I am:

'Good at on the spot problem solving. Like action, enjoy whatever comes along. Tend to like mechanical things and sports, with friends on the side. Adaptable, pragmatic; focussed on getting results. Dislike long explanations. Are best with real things that can be worked, handled, taken apart or put together.'

There are a whole load of other words, but they could mean anything.

Hmm. 'With friends on the side', eh? What? Like a garnish?

And sport sucks.

But other than that, it's not a bad assessment.

Today's Forecast Is Grey

There are some benefits to working on the 14th floor. On a good day, the view is great. You can see for miles. Today, however, it is not. It's nasty and grey and damp. in fact i would go as far as to say 'murky'. I have taken a couple of pictures to share my nasty, grey, damp and murky view with you.

I took them with my phone... so they're a bit fuzzy. Stop complaining.

Er... Skoda

Yes, yes. I know what you're thinking. Why would the most incredibly cool person ever to grace a web page deign to reduce himself to writing about an object as amazingly uncool as a Skoda. Particularly one that comes in as unattractive a blue as the one pictured above.

Well, I'll tell you. As a person who has been blessed with such good looks, charisma, intelligence and so-on, it is my lot to live my life knowing how much better (and yes, cooler) I am than anyone or anything around me.

Being so fantastically great is an arduous responsibility and it can be very wearing at times. Every so often I feel the need to artificially lower myself in the perception of the people around me, so that they can feel more comfortable around me and not wander round, as they normaly do, in an awestricken stupor whilst in my presence. Hence, every now and again, I persuade my barber to give me a crappy haircut, or I allow myself to be seen in public with Stead.

Recently, my singular magnificence has become such a burden that, this weekend, I just had to take action. Drastic action. Amazingly drastic, in fact.

Since Christmas I have been without a car. This is because I am so cool that I have yet to find a car that can contain such coolness. Sadly this car-lessness has become something of an irritation, stopping me as it does from performing such simple tasks such as popping to the supermarket (obviously I have people queuing up to perform favours such as this for me in exchange for being noticed by me - but I don't like to take advantage of the unwashed masses).

So yesterday, I graciously allowed the Stead to drive me, (in his lady-like Nissan Micra) out to a small vehicular boutique near Barclay. It was my intention to purchase something appropriate to my obvious status. However, when I saw Stead's little bottom lip quivering, I took pity and purchased a Skoda instead.

Let me reiterate this and make it as clear as I possibly can. I bought a Skoda to make Stead feel better about his Nissan Micra. This was very gracious of me and he should be eternally grateful.

Excellent. Now I've made that clear, I shall be off to do more exciting things with my time. Like my laundry (yes, I know, I know - an amazing guy like me shouldn't have to do his own laundry, but I had a bad experience with some of my fans stealing my underwear).

Sickeningly Cute

Cats are buggers. One minutes they're destroying your property and creating foul, foul smells. The next they're being sickeningly cute:

More

Ran again last night.

Legs hurt.

I Am So Dead

I'm gonna start this story with the events of yesterday... I think it will be readily apparent early on where the story is going and why the title of this post is what it is.

Fisrt off, I have to come clean. I'm the first person to take the michael out of girls for the amount of time that they spend shopping for shoes. Shoes and handbags. So when I tell you that I spent over an hour buying a pair of running shoes from a specialist sports shop in Southmead, it is with a certain amount of chargrin.

It had taken a couple of weeks for me to convince Stead that it was time to bite the bullet and buy the running shoes. (Apparently running shoes are not trainers and vice-versa.) He finally relented and we were going to do it on Friday evening, but when the time came, Stead 'couldn't be bothered'. So come Monday, I leaned (my considerable weight) on him until he gave in and at quarter to 5 on a dank Monday evening, we found ourselves in a sports store called 'Sweatshop' in Southmead.

Sweatshop. Bodes well, doesn't it?

Anyways. We were served by a very nice and embarrasingly fit man called Matt who explained to us all about support, arches, road surfaces and shin splints and stuff and sucessfully managed not to patronise the two suited gentlemen in front of him who were clearly as unfit as a pair of unfit weasels. Very exciting. He made us run in various pairs of shoes until we were satisfied with the fit and support we were getting.

The upshot of all of this was that he sold us 2 pairs of £70 running shoes. And we discovered that he had amazingly small hands. If you're in Bristol and you need running shoes, consider this a recommendation.

So, Tuesday evening comes around and the time comes for our first run. It is our ultimate aim to get to 5 miles a run, two or three times a week. Well, we didn't manage that, but we were quite happy with the 2ish miles that we did run. Of course there were one or two rests included in that. It killed us. It killed Stead more than it killed me, but dead is dead. We're so unfit. Our first hurdle is to master that 2 mile run with no break. Then we'll extend it to 2 and a half or 3 miles. Hopefully in a couple of months time, we'll be running a reasonable distance and almost look like we know what we're doing.

And that, my friends is why I am so dead.

An Update For The Week

I've been extremely lax this week. I haven't posted once, despite many, many exciting things happeing since my last post. So here's a single post that will bring me up to date:

Thursday: Computer Repair 101

I went over to my Gran's last night. She made me sausage and mash for my tea.

In exchange I had to fix her PC. She had been very vague about the problem. Something about a very small box on the screen and she couldn't read it. This had been a problem since my Aunt had visited and used the PC a couple of months ago.

Upon starting the machine up, I discovered that the screen resolution had been changed from 640x480 to 800x600, rendering all of the icons and windows too small for my Gran to read. So I changed it back for her.

She was very grateful, declared me a computer guru and gave me more sausages.

Tuesday: Another Fire Alarm

We had a power cut at about 10.00 this morning. The power cut caused
a short in the basement building which began to spark and smoke and in
turn tripped the fire alarm. So we all had to leave the building.

Again.

Hooray.

Friday: Rude People

I may be in trouble at work. A Divisional Manager phoned me up yesterday. Divisional Managers are pretty senior and more or less report to the board of directors - this one has about 40,000 people working for him. In an organisation as big as mine, that makes him
God and me a lowly, lowly pleb. Beneath his notice in fact. Let's, for the sake of annonymity, call him Geoff.

So, about 15 minutes into the conversation, Geoff asked me a technical question about one of the procedures that I deal with. I began to explain the concept to him, when he yawned. Very oudly, with no attempt to hide the fact.

"I'm bored now," he said.

"That," I informed the Divisional Manager, "was rather rude wasn't it, Geoff." I then continued to provide the requested information with as much unneccessary detail as I could.

The remainder of the converstaion was rather terse.