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First
of all, if you want to have a look at old ramblings, have a look at Ye Olde Weblog Archives.
Sunday,September
24th,2006
Working
in Madrid 4 days out of 5 from now on.
The weblog may be updated again
some time, but I'm not sure if I have the patience or time any more .
Sorry.
ThursdaysThursday,July
20th,2006
The Grand Dame wasn't well again since I talked to
you
last. We seem to have had odd days when she can't do much (usually on a
Saturday !), and other times when she's out in the back garden, tossing
cabers and fighting skinheads.Well, you know what I mean :there's no
halfway house with Her. BUT, she's going to be doing a less stressful
job in the same firm - (not working for the unappreciative cow she
works for at present is going to be a REAL benefit - we actually got a
call from the bitch on a Sunday afternoon 'cos SHE'S going off
work to have her corns plastered and HER work has to come
first).
AND, The Lady of The House is going to get HER procedure done in the
next couple of months, so this palpitation bollocks has a 70% chance of
being cured.
What shall I tell you about then? The stuff that might get done to the
house, the fact that the bike might get scrapped soon, I might get some
tidying done in the garden but the bloke next door hasn't started on
his work yet, so I wouldn't have anywhere to put a skip because he's
monopolising the road in front of the house with his family's 4
vehicles, the fact that I got some shares from Standard Life
worth about £1400 (shame their endowment policy came
up about £30K short on the mortgage), the new flashy
Epson
printer that we bought that has instructions in
Spanish,Italian,Portuguese,German.French and Dutch, BUT NOT ENGLISH ?
No. Let us talk about people.
We saw Trev in the pub the other night,at a distance. I made out I
didn't see him, and I'm pretty sure he didn't see us (he's as blind as
a bat) but he had started to become a pain when we went out. Go to a
chinese and he always expects everybody to share what they've had with
everybody else. He asks for spare plates. I like noodle soup, and the
only way you can share that is by passing the bowl around.Much
opprobrium,sarcasm, and general bullshit from the Great Man. On top of
this, over the last year he has been getting extremely interested in my
well-being. 'Interested', as in 'Why don't you smarten yourself up,
noone will ever think much of you if you're always scruffy'. And 'Look,
you're job is a crap job' (no that's not what he said, but that is
certainly what he meant), and 'I've finally got myself a Plan in Life,
you too should get yourself a Plan in Life. Listen To Me'. Of
course, he is worth so much more than me, but he's been careful with
his money, been his own boss in umpteen different business ventures
and he's STILL not living the life of Riley, and he's still
working, and he's 62. And
I think, if you're so smart , why aren't you retired and a millionaire
? I've known him a long time;everybody changes; perhaps it's time for
us to go separate ways.
We
went out with my friend Ken a couple of weeks ago. He's back with his
older, Danish friend, Yetta. She's got him under control, hasn't she ?
She virtually pulled the glass away from in front of him when he tried
to refill it. Of course, he does like to sup a bit when he's
driving, and to be fair it's not a clever thing to do. And, to be fair,
she's a calming influence on him. She said she could understand why we
had been friends for so long. I noted a hint of disdain somewhere in
there.
Colleagues. I asked Workmate A if he fancied coing out for a drink the
other day. Drink ? he says. Why ? What are we celebrating ? What for ?
No. No. Certainly Not. So I went out yesterday, again,on my own. And I
didn't ask him. It's alright though,because today Workmate B walked
down the office asking people if they wanted to go out this
lunch
time. The arse walked AROUND my desk, asked everybody else in the
office, and Workmate A was VERY pleased to go out. Oh well, perhaps I
should work on my charm. Workmate B is an ex-manager of mine:I know
I'm managerially challenging, but I don't see what his problem
was. Unfortunately, Workmate A is just a pain in the arse,
sometimes. It was probably his Time of The Month, and I am A Bitch, so
Shut That Door. The upshot of it all was that I
had another Lone Pint today. It's getting to be a habit again.
My
new employers. What can I say? Not only are they expecting me to do the
same crap work as I was doing before, but they're going to fleece me
for a pension that is going to be worth bugger-nothing. I'm going to be
a pauper. I am going to be £10K a YEAR worse off when I
retire,minimum. They fill up my mailbox with crap about
their Inter-Faith Society, where I can learn
about Islam and
have sweetmeats and a curry afterwards, and there was another
email from the Great Man who was writing it in the middle of a
forest with exemplary views, telling me how great his life was. And
there was the email about Parenting, and the one on How Mr X Motivates
His Staff By Regular Encouragement Meetings'. I'm still waiting fo rthe
one that says 'we've got some really interesting work to do, come on
down, Stephenstephen,
And I think I might be dysthymic.I've got LOTS of symptoms. Her Majesty
says 'Go to the Doctor', but I DAREN'T, cos I went to see him recently,
about my arm. It had been stiff ever since I became an ex-biker in
February. I had chest pains too, and I thought I might be having
cardiac problems, cos I'm a bit of a hypochondriac,and I've been around
My Duchess recently. The bugger twisted my arm around and nearly had me
on the floor.You've got a swelling in your muscle, he says. Take these
pills for a month. And lo, I was healed. The thing is, if I tell him
I've got lots of dysthymic symptoms, he might think he's got
to
batter me around the head for a bit first.....
Sunday,July
2nd,2006
I'm glad June's
over, actually.
It started of poorly, what with the next door neighbour coming round,
but it's been a bit of bumpy ride off and on most of the
month.
Saturday the 17th was Good.We walked round Kew gardens, and drank like
trenchermen and ate like pigs. And we even got stuck on an
overcrowded tube where one woman said it was like a group sauna and I
started giggling because I thought we should all throw our clothes off
and have a team bath, but that's another story.
The problem is that her Majesty had had palpitations or
something like it off and on that week : she had seen the doctor on the
previous monday and
was prescribed a different type of beta-blocker.
Anyway, she didn't feel very well on the Sunday after we
went to Kew:we had breakfast and then her palpitations were so bad she
decided to go to the Mayday.
In the A+E, all hell broke loose.She had a panic attack
where she would havepassed out if the doctor hadn't come and given her
oxygen (the two
nurses didn't react at all: they were at the end of their shifts and
out there in Lala Land!). The woman just looke dand the charge nurse
just kept on asking her name : he had obviously been told that he
shouldn't touch a pationt unless he's been formally introduced. I
started shouting 'She can't breathe !!, and a doctor walked
over
and gave her some oxygen, and told her she was alright. I don't know
who this woman was, but she was blonde and beautiful, and I don't care
how painful it is, but I'll have her babies for her, I was so relieved.
Then, another doctor came and saw The Patient and said if she didn't
get her palpitations down, My Queen would have a stroke (no, that's not
what he
said, but that's what we both heard !!)
The shift changed and a nurse came and gave her an
injection and then , eventually, she was taken to the Cardiac Care
Unit. The drugs
were kicking in by then : she was feeling better. She was to stay there
until she had 12 hours with a normal heartbeat. The
cardiologist
said she was
NOT going to have a stroke : the other doctor was not a cardio
specialist,but an A+E triage person.
I went home, had a cup of tea, chopped down a bush in the
back garden then went back on the bus with a few clothes. She asked for
two
nighties: I brought her 1 nighty and two summer dresses. What I want to
know is : what does a nighty look like ?
I picked her up on Monday morning, and worked from home most of the
week, just to make sure that she was OK. She's on new drugs, but she
doesn't tell me when she's not well. Her daughter came down to see her
last week: she gave me full permission to kick My Beautiousnesses' arse
into next month if
she tries to do things when she's not well.
The following Friday morning, the MD told us all that we were all going
to be working near to Kingston in two years time, so on the Saturday,
Her and I went for a day in Kingston. Kingston's smart:
swans on the river,restaurants and boozers and bookshops, and I even
tried out a guitar in a
second-hand shop. Kingston's not quite the clone town that Croydon's
become,either. The river adds a bit of class.
Our old boss took the department out to Lingfield Park on
Thursday, where I
got drunk on the company, took photos and lost a fiver on the last race
to show willing. The sun shone too, and my workmate
Darren gave me a lift back home in his Impreza. Try to get a ride in
one while there's still enough petrol in the world !
Yesterday, we did London again : Regent's Park, Primrose Hill, the West
End and home. Not many Ingalund World Cup supporters being merry at 6
pm for some
reason, but lots of foreign gay people walking around with their bums
hanging out, or flashing their tattoos, or wearing sailor suits or Red
Indian outfits, or costumes out of the Follies Bergeres or other things
that I just don't see in my local kebab house. Some of them
wore
pink cowboy hats. Every year one city
hosts a Euro Gay Pride Day, and yesterday London did the honours.
At least they seemed happier than the Ingalund crowd.
And tomorrow, I go to work, with a difference. I have been
'outsourced', I have a new boss,I don't know who he is
(perhaps
he/she doesn't know either). My pay comes a week
later, my pension looks flakier, they take things out of my pay at
source that I never use. Of course, I may be doing more enjoyable
work. Or I may not.
For once I'm living in interesting times.
Sunday,June
4th,2006
I've
not been keeping you boys and girls up to date, have I? Sorry.
The week after the guitar show I went up to Shropshire to see my
mother. I don't think it was Four Weddings and a Funeral, more like
Four Blokes and a Traffic Jam.
The traffic jam happened on the way up from London to Shropshire.
Actually, it wasn't a JAM, just a morrasse of Gooseberry Compote all
the way up from South of Birmingham upwards (for once it wasn't too bad
around the M25 and up the M40).
And then, in The Village I saw Bloke Number 1. Mum told me it had been
raining heavily all
afternoon, but Bloke Number 1 was outside the pub where I took Mother
for a drink and a
Friday evening meal. The thing is, the grass was obviously wet, but
Homme L'Un was watering the weeds and foot-long grass - yes, weeds and
foot-long grass - just on the main road.
I remarked on this to my mother, she said he wasn't local and
Shropshire has problems with Care in the Community, which may be true,
or may be not, but Man Number One was obviously Strange with a Capital
'S'.
We walked into the
pub, and there, at the bar, drinking pints of lager,
was SpeciMan Number Two.
He was Strange, too, but in a different way. He was wearing a long
white knitted jumper, long as in down to the floor, a kaftan-type
chemise top, and a very large necklace made out of large brown stones
like you would find on a beach, except they were polished and painted.
And his nails were painted bright red. All the locals seemed to know
him, and he talked to everone there, including me:
I heard the landlord explain once he had gone that he was An Artist,
and that Mother's Village was his 'Retreat', or something like that.
Anyway, he took what seemed to be a drawing display case out of the pub
with him, and drove away in a light blue Transit van.
Saturday, I took
Mum into Oswestry, and she wanted to walk around a
Pound Shop, and there I saw Gentleman The Third.And I knew this one.
When I was a lad, he ran his own garage down a side street and he used
to service my car for me. He had been a firemen - in fact he was the
driver, I think. And now he was driving a one of those little invalid
carriages inside the Pound shop. Mechanics like to drive and customise
their cars: he had put a rear-view mirror on his vehicle, and he
obviously enjoyed threading it through the aisles that weren't much
more than 3 foot across.
I was sorry to see he couldn't walk, but I reckon he must be about 85
now. And, no, I didn't talk
to him.
Mother and I met Man NUmber Four on Saturday night. He just came over
and talked to us while we were finishing our
meal. Hello Keith, I said, (cos I knew him when I was in school, he
worked as an electrician for my Dad) how are you ?
I've got Cancer, says Keith, but I thought
I'd come over and talk to you and your Mother. We exchanged a bit of
conversation, and he doesn't seem too well
actually. Let's hope he's still around when I go up to Shropshire next
time.
I was back at work until the late May Bank Holiday. All I can say about
work is that it's shite. But, on Bank Holiday Monday my Queen and I
flew off to Budapest. We came back on Friday. And what can I tell you
about Buda, Pest, Hungarians, Hungarian food, Hungarian weather ? Well,
the weather wasn't too bad : two days were sunny, and it rained off and
on for the other two days. We saw the towns Buda AND Pest, we saw the
zoo, we ate, we
drank, we walked, we used the trams and the Metro, and took photos.
Booze
is good, but stay away from the 'noodles' : they're just congealed
gloop, I thought. Budapest is a pretty town, but I strove manfully to
find a pretty girl. I was beginning to think I was having
a gender re-assignment, because lots of the men seemed prettier than
the girls and the women, who mainly seemed to have
been hit pretty hard with the Ugly Stick when they were little.But
Hungarian women didn't like the look of me, either.I didn't impress the
young girl at Customs on the way in, she actually looked at my
passport with a magnifying glass, a la Sherlock Holmes. And on the way
out of the country, another woman sternly told me to take my belt off
before I went through the security gate. She obviously thought I needed
to be disciplined.
But on Saturday I realised that I'm still
heterosexual: the girls in Croydon are ALL prettier than the boys, and
some of them,like Mr Kipling's Cakes, look exceedingly good.
And yesterday, the next-door neighbour came round,freshly back from his
home in Spain : he's going to look into the price of repairs to the
house, and would I
like my half done as well? The thing is, I know things need to be done,
but he was talking of spending anywhere up to £6K. If I spend
that kind of money that's my replacement car and new guitar out the
window. I think when I tell him that I can't have
everything done, I'll have to remind him that he's a man of property
and substance in Tarragona, while I'm just a
wage-slave paying poll tax to Ken Livingstone so that we can host a
load of professional, drug-enhanced 'sports' men and women for two
weeks in 2012. And they don't come cheap.
Tuesday,9th
May,2006
Last
weekend wasn't bad, it was just expensive.
It started off with good intentions,I think, but it decided that it
wanted to have fun and do A Jackie Onassis on me.
I have been thinking of buying a new car. Or a guitar. I know they seem
a bit different, but there I go. Anyway, I thought I would go
to a guitar show in Wembley, at the Conference Centre. I caught a
bus,caught a train, caught the Jubilee line, walked past the new
Wembley Stadium building site and got to the Conference
Centre. £9 to get in, with a voucher from a guitar mag I had
bought recently. Walked in and....overcome by cacophony! Lots of
PHENOMENALLY good musicians playing, all at the same time, but
something different. AND, unfortunately, the punters playing too, which
is NOT so good. I walked around. As usual at such affairs,
left-handed guitars were few and far between. And 7-stringers, like I
fancy.....well,yes, there were 7-stringers - right-handed, of
course - but they were all over £2k ! Yes, £2,000
to £3000, to be precise. And after a while, I went for lunch.
A bottle of beer, a bottle of water, a packet of crisps and a round of
very tasty pork and stuffing butty costs £8.50! I spend my
lunch in the smokey bar, talking to a Brummy with a broken wrist. He
tells me that he's given his missus one credit card, and let her loose
in the West End. Seems a nice bloke. His problem is that he's come all
the way down to London and he can't buy anything, because none
of the stuff is for sale. Then I go into the accoustic area.
Very nice: two Frenchmen (or were they Australians ?) playing gypsy
jazz, but again, the guitars they are demoing are between
2 and 3 Kay. So I go back into the main hall, and listen to
the cacophany. But I had noticed that there was a Record Fair,
nothing to do with the guitar show, in an adjoining hall, and it will
cost me two quid to get in. Well, I've already spent about
£25 on logistics, entry fees and food, it doesn't seem so bad.
And here's where I
have some fun. I'm in there about 25 minutes, and I buy 2 records, at a
tenner each. Five Bridges, by The Nice (1969 vintage), and 'Tristeza on
Guitar' by Baden Powell (1966). No,not the Ging-Ganger who Watched Your
Goolies, but a Brazilian jazz guitarist who was named after
the Scout Master. Go and listen to some of his stuff. An
occasional whiskey drinker
I think, he died a couple of years ago , at the age
of 63.All his organs shut down. I'm glad I don't like whiskey. Running
Total,by the way, is now £47.
At this point, I
head back for Croydon, and meet Her LadyShip. I get a coffee and a bun
(£4), meet her in a bar (£7) and we go for a meal
(£44, My Lady leaves a tip, and I don't
like the wine). (RT is £102.
And when I get
home, I look at my email. Mr Egg wants to talk to me. He has finally
got round to asking me for the money for our holiday, our washing
machine that replaced the old one, and the work I had done on the
Heritage.That's £1000+, to you,Stephenstephen.Total for the
day is £1100+.
On Sunday, it
was sunny, while it had
rained on Saturday, But
I
Was Worried. I managed to cock the pc up while I was playing with
it : that took about 4 hours of my time. And My Princess had a
bad
stomach again. But at least I didn't spend any money.
Wedneday,3rd
May,2006
Last
weekend was the 'Early may Bank Holiday'. Saturday, I picked up the
Heritage from the guitar shop in Croydon :it needed some work doing on
the neck again, and I thought I would try some different strings. It's
getting to be an expensive toy: £80 for a set up, and I
supplied my own strings. The action had got a bit high : I presumed it
was because the neck was moving as it was drying out (it's about 12
months old now). Anyway, the strings are fairly heavy La
Bellas, and I think the neck is starting to move again :I'm sure it had
a lower action on Saturday than it had tonight. It's probably all in my
head.
I've been telling
Her Indoors that I might sell the car, so while I was picking up the
guitar, My Lady washed the Corsa - and cleaned it inside (losing the
pasty packets and the banana skin and the oily paper handkerchiefs that
I'd used to test the engine oil level) and even vacuumed the boot where
the leaves were after I'd been to the tip.
We decided that on
the Sunday we would go into London : - I needed a new pair of trainers.
Monday was going to be spent looking at used cars at a car supermarket
in Crawley.
So, Sunday we
trekked into London, and as we were going down Oxford Street I saw
Selfridges.I bet I can buy my trainers in there, I said, so
we jumped off and walked through Selfridges in search of trainers. We
passed all the Hugo Boss and Kenzo and Armani stuff, and found the
trainers. They are the same price as anywhere else, so I say 'Can I
have a pair of these in this size?. And
the very harrassed female assistant goes to get some for me. I try them
on,
and they're just right, so I pay. I say to the bloke who serves me 'And
you can keep the box' (I'd bought a rucksack) - and he looks at me and
smiles and says 'That's very generous of you,
it's just what
I've always wanted.' Anyway, we walk on for a bit just off Oxford
Street, and when we get
back to it I see a 'thai' restaurant, and I say to her, go and have a
look, and if it's allright we'll eat there tonght before we go home. So
we split up - I take a photo of a 7-string Fender Strat prototype in
Denmark Street , and look at bookshops and record shops and then we
meet again and have a drink. (I'm sure she enjoyed herself
too). What's the thai place look like, I ask.
Really Good, She says. So that's where we end up. Yes, it was very good
: it was also vegan
: all the 'meat' was actually tvp or soya (I wonder
what the life-like prawns were made from ?). Now, I'm a
carnivorous omnivour, and a
balanced diet for me is half a chicken in one hand and another half a
chicken in the other, but I can stand anything if it's spicy enough,and
this was OK. for me. We ended up in a wine bar afterwards so
we weren't
all that virtuous. Next morning, (Bank Holiday Monday) I wake
up and The Lady
of the North is not in bed : she's had to get up in the middle of the
night with a bad gut. She can't eat soya, you know. Oh. how we laughed.
After she's trolled around the house a bit we go down to Crawley, and
we sit in some second-hand cars. And I realise that although I really
fancy a cabriolet, I still need a shopping trolley. My dreams of being
a twenty-year old Brian Wilson in my Little Deuce Coupe are smashed. I
tell her that I'm not too sure about buying a replacement for the
Corsa, and she says, with a fiersome glint in her eye, 'So you got me
to wash the car under false pretences, then ??!!'.
Saturday,23rd
April,2006
On
Friday,17th February,2006, at 7.30 am in the
morning, I was a biker. By 8 o'clock that morning, I was no longer a
biker.Nothing much important has happened since:I'm going to be working
for another firm, I got a bonus this year,I'm thinking of upgrading my
car and buying another
guitar: I'm thinking of having a seven-string shredder built that will
have scalloped frets above the octave, a semi-hollow body and an f-hole
(you heard it here first !).Also,the Queen of South London and I will
be going to Budapest for my birthday, and I'm editing this page on a
new pc(!), that is more powerful than an Atlas rocket motor. (Well,
I've got to do something that entails SPEED now that I'm
reduced to commuting in a Vauxhall Corsa, don't I?)
Saturday,11th February,2006
I don't usually write the blog on a Saturday morning :
not even I am that sad, but when I can't go anywhere...
Let me tell you why.
Last weekend, I did the trek up to see my mother: she'd had her
birthday on the 1st of Feb. I went up on Friday afternoon, and hit
Birmingham around 5 o'clock, and joined the jamming Brummies around the
M40/M42/M6 scrum. And I managed NOT to take the proper turn off before
the M6 toll. Well, stick a firework up my arse, why don't they sign the
bloody M6 turn-off better ??!! There are about half a dozen signs that
point to everywhere else (that are all too low because of all the heavy
lorries that are so high that they obliterate the view). Please
remember, good people of the Highways Agency, THE M6 IS A BLOODY
MOTORWAY, IT SHOULD BE PROPERLY SIGNED, AND NOT EVERYBODY WANTS TO PAY
YOU £3 TO USE THE LITTLE RACETRACK THAT YOU'VE PUT THROUGH
THE MIDDLE OF BIRMINGHAM !!!
So, I turned round, went back to the NEC, and THEN took the turn for
the M6 and the North. And then for the rest of Friday, Saturday, and
Sunday morning, I did the normal things I do when I go up to see my
mother, which isn't much.
I came back on Sunday afternoon, got the stuff out of the car, and shut
the garage door.
It's been very dry here this week, and JUST warm enough for me to use
the bike, so Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, that's what I did. Thursday
came, and it was a lot colder, so, having turned into soft southern
sh*te and not wanting to emulate a brass monkey, I opened the
garage door a 9 o'clock (I planned to do 10 till 6 at work), got into
the car and put the key in the ignition. And was greeted by the sound
of one hand clapping. Or was it the sound that a tree makes when it
falls in the forest if there's nobody there to hear it? I don't know. I
do know I had to go to work on the Beemer because the car battery was
flat, and I still got to work quicker than if I'd gone in the car. I
was out of the office door at 5, cos I didn't want to freeze
on the M23.
I used the bus and train yesterday, and paid £11 to London
Public Transport authorities for the privilege. Ken Livingstone should
realise that people who use his overpriced, overstressed, third-world
transport system with stations where people get mugged have been
waiting a long time for him to get it right. My Princess of Pain is one
of them. And many of us don't think that putting extra stress on the
system between now and 2012 so that we can see professional dopers and
drug abusers run around a track is really worth 40 pence a day added to
our council tax.
And right now, while I'm writing this, the battery on my shopping
trolley (to call it a car would be an insult to cars) is charging up
....and that's why I'm writing this on a Saturday
morning.
Sunday,29th
January,2006
I've lost a day in my life and I think it was Monday. Tuesday (below),
felt like Monday, I worked at home on Wednesday and it felt like
Tuesday, I thought I would go into work late on Thursday 'cos I thought
it was Wednesday - and then at 7:50 I realised it WAS Thursday and I
had to be at work for 9 o'clock for a 'resilience management' course....
What's resilience management? I hear you ask. Well, the firm I work for
is trying to lose a lot of people. We're either being made redundant
and our jobs are going to be done by people in Poland who will work for
half a potato and a bowl of borscht, or to people in India who will do
our jobs for a bowl of veg curry and a naan bread, OR we're going to be
'outsourced' - we do the same work for the next three years and work
for someone else who are paid money by our current employers. At the
end of three years our current employers won't need us, and then...we
might have a job to go to if our new employers can move us somewhere
else. 'Resilience management' is about learning techniques to handle
the stress of not knowing what's going to happen to your job in the
next six months or so. Basically, we should smile, be pro-active, have
a plan. Unfortunately, all we know is that the two companies can't come
to any agreement as to what is going to happen either to us, or to the
jobs that we do. So I don't know what I've got to be resilient against.
It was a pleasant waste of a day, I suppose.
Finally, I've had back-ache all week and I don't know why. It might
have been something I did early on in the week, but I don't know what I
was doing, because I've lost a day in my life and I think it
was Monday.........
Tuesday,24th Jan, 2006
Bloody Happy Bloody New Bloody Year. Bloody.
Did you know that the 24th of January is, officially, the worst day of
the year ? Have a look at the BBC, on
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/4187183.stm I
can heartily agree with this.....
I've not been updating the log for a month : I think I get Seasonal
Affective Disorder, or, perhaps, (more likely), I just can't be arsed
to do anything in January.
Last week was a disappointment. Our gas-boiler (you know, the one we
had to buy because a jerry-builder screwed up our old one), has started
to go 'BANG!!' every so often. It makes a noise like a Subaru Impreza
backfiring, and it switches off the pilot light. So, we relight it, and
it goes off again. I called British Gas on Thursday. The nice
lady said her man would be around on Friday, before 1 pm. So I worked
from home. But the Gas Man had not come by 12:45. So I ring British
Gas. Where is he ? I ask. You're not booked in, I'm told. SO WHEN CAN
HE COME, I say, through gritted teeth. Tomorrow, I'm told. Before
midday.
Saturday comes. And the Gas Man comes. BUT NOT UNTIL 1:30 !!! To be
fair he's very thorough: he cleans, he adjusts, he gets his face dirty,
he uses our loo, and, to be fair, he does a professional job. But he
blows our Saturday out of the water, and SOMEONE was supposed to come
on Friday, although that's not his fault. We go out for the scrag-end
of Saturday, come home, and switch on the central heating. BANG !,it
goes. So, on Monday, Her Indoors makes another booking (this is the
third actual booking we've made, remember). The Gas Man can come on
Tuesday (the 24th, today).
This time, My Princess has the afternoon off, and the Gas Man Comes.
But this one looks at it, and says 'you need another ignition unit. Can
someone come around tomorrow?' So, I'm going to work from home in the
morning. I've told my boss, and her boss, and another boss (but I told
them by email, and I didn't get a reply, so I haven't really had
permission....). This is the fourth planned visit from The Gas Man. He
is turning into a non-paying lodger.i
And I've had another disappointment. I thought I would chop my BMW
R1100s in for an R1200GS. My bike is good, but an R1200GS is better.
So, I went up to the Beemer dealer on Saturday, since I was getting
stir-crazy waiting for the Gas Man, and because Her Majesty said I
could. 'How much will you give me for my bike against a second-hand (ie
2004/2005) R1200GS?'. 'Next to bugger-nothing', comes the reply. 'You
see, you've actually USED the thing, and we only give anything like
book-price against an old bike if you haven't actually ridden it, and ,
yes, we will take the Triumph as well, but it's worthless to us, we'll
put it on E-bay'. I'll come and have look at it for you, but I'll
probably offer to take it off your hands, and don't expect anything
back in return.' So, I looked at what I was going to fork out, and I
realised that I COULD afford to buy th R1200GS, but I couldn't afford
to eat, drink, or go to the toilet for 12 months. And so I've given the
idea up. But I did find some joy on the interweb : I've found a man who
has put a Givi topbox on an R1100S. The Garage of Thieves has told me
that I can't do this, but I now have the proof ! And with the money I
save from NOT chopping in my bike, I can suddenly afford a new
computer, an addition to the guitar collection, a new PDA, perhaps even
a GPS for the bike........
But, coming back down to earth, shall I tell you why January the 24th
is the worst day of the year ? Shall I ? Oh, alright then, you've
twisted my arm. I got out of the house at 7:20 this morning, and had my
breakfast at work. I went in the car, 'cos I'm too soft to ride when
it's minus 4 outside. I leave work at 6:15 this evening, 'cos THINGS
DON'T WORK, and then a 6-car pile-up has happened on the M25, so I
queue, along with everybody who drives a car in South London, to get
into Croydon. I get home at 8:10 in the evening. I have, in effect,
worked a 12 hour and 50 minute day.
Next year on 24th January I'll stay in bed.
Sunday,25/12/2005
Have a Merry Christmas, and don't spend all of 2006 pissing about
looking on the web. Go and talk to real people.
Sunday,18/12/2005
Another 2 weeks have gone by. In no particular order, I've seen my
doctor, given a blood sample and been ECG'd, painted a blue dolphin,
walked in Ashdown Forest and met a very large monkey.
A few details might be in order, I suppose.
I've been feeling peculiar at work: things go a bit distant, I don't
seem to get my words out and I feel a bit dizzy, and I have had chest
pains . It only lasts a few seconds, but its happened twice when I've
been talking to my boss Caroline. I think it's a symptom of
hypoglycaemia and indigestion, and one of my New Years Resolutions for
2006 is to guide my hand when I put food into my mouth rather than
letting my over-developed appetite do it for me. It might not be that,
so I went to see the Doctor. It's now the son of my old doctor. He's
still of Indian descent, and he wears a suit just like his dad. He
looks at me and I tell him what's wrong, and he arranges the blood test
and the ECG for me, takes my blood-pressure and says it's TOO HIGH and
ominously says the word 'Belly' at me twice in the conversation, in a
meaningful sort of way, rather in the fashion of an expletive.
Basically, he thinks I'm a fat bastard, and at my age I should think of
slimming down. He asked me was I under any stress ? and I mentioned
about the outsourcing thing, but I did think that I do get ANNOYED at
things, which could put my blood pressure up, and one of the things
would have been his tie if I'd had to look at it for more than 15
minutes. Anyway, on Friday I took the morning off and did the blood
test and ECG thing. The Canadian/American lady (couldn't tell quite
which from her accent, probably Norwegian) stuck all the wires on me
and monitored the computer screen that looks like an old fashioned
lie-detector that you see in old films. I asked her about the relative
merits of chest and back-waxing at times when you have to have
electrodes ripped off your skin, but she couldn't offer much advice in
that area. I'll be able to find the results out after the New Year, but
if there was anything immediately wrong with the ECG she wouldn't have
let me walk out of the hospital.
Last Tuesday we had a Team Day, or as I prefer to think of it, a Day of
Enforced Fun. I had to drive down the A22 to find a village hall out in
the country, and for three hours 8 of us were down there, painting over
a pre-drawn outline of a dolphin. The lady at the front showed us what
we had to do, step by step, and we did it after. Everybody had a
dolphin at the end, but they were all different. She said that when we
got them home, our families/partners/next door neighbours would all
gasp in amazement that we had done the paintings. When I got it home,
My Queen DID say that I hadn't done it, but that it was crap anyway. In
the afternoon we took a quick walk in Ashdown Forest. I didn't think
that there were enough trees there for it to be called a 'forest', but
there was a lot of burned-down gorse and bracken. I told The Boss that
Croydon was regarded as an urban forest, but he didn't believe me.
Last night My Ladyship-Who-Thinks-I-Have-Negligible-Artistic-Talent and
I went to see the remake of King Kong. It's a 3-hour film and the first
hour is a bit slow, and then, on 'Skull Island', it all kicks off. The
last two hours are amazing. You will believe that dinosaurs roam the
earth, and you'll never look at insects or sea anemones without
thinking 'what if ...?'. You will also believe that 25-foot
tall apes have aesthetic sensibilities. I won't give any of the story
away, but I might as well tell you it doesn't turn out well for the
monkey.
Sunday,04/12/2005
I've not had the urge to tell anybody my life recently. Nothing's
wrong, it's just that it would bore the pants off most people. I'll
give you the edited highlights, in no particular order. I am going to
see the doctor on Tuesday about the odd dizzy spell I'm having. Her
Mellowness thinks I've got low blood pressure, or high blood pressure,
or I'm diabetic, but I think I'm just hypoglycaemic, and if I ate
properly I would be perfectly OK.
Sometime during the last couple of weeks, the speedo broke on the
Beemer. It was strange to be travelling on the M23 at zero miles an
hour. The philosophical conundrum is : were the cars I passed going in
reverse, and how were they ever going to get to Crawley, Brighton, or
anywhere else ? I'm not a technical genius, but I thought I might be
able to connect a cable from the front wheel to the speedometer, with
aid of a Haynes manual, so I got one on Ebay, for £3.00,
including postage. The thing is, it was on cd-rom, and when I looked at
it, it might as well have been written in German. I asked them at the
garage whether it was just a speedo cable which you join up to the
front wheel, and they said "No, it's an electronic sensor that's joined
to the rear wheel", so it had to let them do it. When I went back , the
bill was nearly £190, because it needed new rear brake-pads,
too. The gent behind the desk was saying how it was because of the abs
that would put the rear brake on whenever I put on the front brakes,
but I thought 'Hold on, what he's actually talking about is linked
brakes: ABS just puts the front brake off and on, so that it doesn't
start to skid. I told him that I didn't HAVE ABS on my bike.
He, like me, does not seem to be a technical genius so I just let it
go: the rear brakes had worn down to the metal anyway.
The thing was, I sat on an R1200GS: they had one with a low seat. It
was perfect. They would part-exchange two bikes for one, so the man
said, so I'd be able to get rid of the Triumph that's been on a SORN
for two years. One problem is that my mate Trevor has offered to pay me
more for the Beemer than the garage would give me for it, and I'm sure
they wouldn't give me anything for the Triumph on it's own. Trevor
reminded me about it today: we (him, me, Paula, Her Omniscient
Fruitfulness) went to Streatham for a Chinese at lunchtime. He and
Paula were celebrating 10 years of cohabiting. Paula looks as pretty as
ever, but I'm sure that Trev's even more argumentative than ever. He
writes letters to The Times, AND GETS THEM PUBLISHED.
The only other thing I've got to tell you about of any great note is
that I haven't been writing my weblog because I have been playing The
Sims too much. It's addictive.
Wednesday,16/11/2005
I went to work on Friday morning so that one of my betters could tell
us how valued we were, in spite of us being 'outsourced'. He would tell
us everything we wanted know, so he said, apart from what hadn't been
decided yet and what he couldn't tell us because of 'due dilligence'.
Basically, he talked for two and a half hours and told us bugger all.
He'd make a great politician if he decided he wanted a drop in pay. He
did lead us to believe that for three years our jobs would be safe, and
that The Business would not make us redundant, and certainly not if we
wanted to be made redundant, as a few do. We got a precis of
The Company's current musings on our 'outsourcing' emailed to us a
couple of days later, and the first thing it mentions is... Redundancy,
with a capital 'R'. Oh well.
In the afternoon, I went up to see my Mother in Shropshire. I was in
the car, 'cos I can't really take her to Sainsbury's on the back of the
Beemer, not with her being 75 and not very fit. Got caught in a traffic
jam South of Birmingham on the M42 on my way up. I stopped
off in Shrewsbury for something to eat, and as I was walking around was
passed by a bloke on a little motorbike. The thing is, he was wearing a
white dog-suit, with black splodges on it, like a dalmation. I think
Shropshire is getting more surreal than it was in my day, so rather
than have a proper meal I 'went large' on a KFC.
Saturday and Sunday morning were spent trying to entertain my Mother,
and I took her to see her cousin. I even took some photos of her
cousin's garden gnomes, as well as a few other things, which might get
published some time.
Coming back, the M25 was closed. Go round the wrong way, the signs
said, but I thought there was just as much chance of it being jammed
clockwise as there was going my normal route, so I got off at the M4.
You know the M4 into London, the only motorway where there's a BUS-LANE
on the outside ? Thankyou, John Prescott. So, I get stuck in a really
groovy jam as I wended my way through South West London. At least I got
to drive through Richmond park , and saw the deer. I don't care what
anybody says, the little ones are just brown sheep with long necks.
Monday came and went, apart from the fact that I got caught in another
traffic jam coming home. Obviously, I'm getting a bit tired of traffic
jams by now, so yesterday I went to work on the Beemer...and pretty
nearly drowned on the way in.
But after all these trials and tribulations, I'm probably feeling a bit
less hassled than one of the managers at work, Richard. I used to work
with Richard, and while my job evolved into the worst kind of tedium
ever known to man, his job blossomed into a career. He's climbed up the
greasy management pole, and as I've slid to the depths of a deep-sea
amoeba, he's done very well, and I'm very pleased for him. Unlike me,
he always seems so calm and collected, which is probably his ace
characteristic. Apart from yesterday, when he was up by the printer.
'Fucking heap of shit'....'Fucking printing 700 pages of fuck and all
the pages are fucking misaligned....'Fucking Bloody
machine'...'Fuck,etc,etc.....Fuck...'. By this time he was shouting.
Loudly. And then he started to kick the printer. Hard. He's a big lad,
and wears big brogue-like shoes.
Today, the printer has boot marks on it. And Richard wasn't at
work.
Sunday,6/11/2005
It's the morning after Bonfire Night. In Lewes they
will have burned effigies of the Pope, again, and Tony Blair
again, and hopefully Geoff Lloyd who is a disk jockey on
Virgin Radio. I haven't been forced to listen to him in the mornings
since Her Royalness discovered Heart FM and Jamie Theakston, but I know
he's still out there and that gives me flashbacks sometimes. Nasty
little Ginger Get.
Talking about gingers as I was, on Tuesday night, we went to
see Mick Hucknall, he of Simply Red fame, at The Royal Albert Hall.
Concert tickets bought by The Empress, who is a life-long aficionado.
He was, well, OK. She said he's starting to look old now, and a red
whispy beard is not a good look even for a six-footer. The concert was
an hour shorter than Steve Vai, but a vocalist CAN'T sing as long as a
bloke can play guitar, I suppose, so we shouldn't complain. And he had
a phenomenal backing band, 11 female string players wearing evening
dress, and a bloke playing a Zemaitas guitar. They weren't as good as
Brian Wilson's band, though. No way. At all.
But the weird thing was I how I got there. I left work a bit early so
that I could catch the train from Gatwick, but by mistake I got on the
Gatwick Express. Shit I thought, the conductor is going to charge me
£13, even though I've got a proper return ticket. Anyway, I
gave him the return, and I had my credit card ready. And he just looked
at me, scrawled on my ticket and walked off. I wonder whether I looked
like The Nutter On The Train, and he thought it was better to leave me
alone rather than risk aggro.
And since Thursday, I are mostly playing The Sims at home. At Christmas
last year, Her Nobility bought me the Sims Deluxe Version, and I
thought I would need a quicker pc to play it, but it seems to be going
OK. All I can say is I'm hooked. Expect some pictures on this site of
Bob Newbie and friends, who at present is having a hard time of it. Oh
well, it's early days yet.
Sunday,30/10/2005
The Liver is Evil and Must Be Punished. The Liver is
Evil and Must Be Punished. The Liver is Evil and Must Be
Punished. So yesterday, My Princess and I went to The Wine
Show in Islington. She does it all wrong. One year we went to something
similar at Olympia, and we started on the whites, then did the reds,
and ate in between. She goes straight into the reds, then the whites,
then the reds again, then a white....etc,etc. Of course we didn't
really uses the spittoons very much : we used those when we were trying
out some New Zealand whites and some cheapo Sicilian stuff, though.
Paint stripper would have been more drinkable, I'm sure. We ate there,
and then we got on the tube and ate somewhere around Waterloo - a place
that specialises in Baltic cooking (the Baltic is surrounded by Sweden,
Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland, I would say), and it
was very good. For once My Princess ordered fish. But I, like
a knob, ordered red wine. And I could have had fish, and a white, but
no I ordered some very filling fried noodly-dumpling things called spatzle
and deliciously-cooked but very fatty pork. And I couldn't finish it.
Stephenstephen felt unwell. But we'll DEFINITELY go back there again.
All I've eaten today is porridge, but I might open a bottle of
something tonight. As I said before The Liver is Evil and
Must Be Punished. The Liver is Evil and Must Be Punished. The Liver is
Evil and Must Be
Punished.
Tuesday,25/10/200v5
I don't usually write two nights on the run, but I
think I
should tell you about the shite day I've had today. The first thing I
hear on the radio when it goes on is that there's a hold-up on the M25,
so I get up early and drive into work in my shit-blue Vauxhall Corsa
(remember, the gloves and the boots are waterlogged) and I have
breakfast at work. It's not a low-gi breakfast :it fucks up my
blood-sugar level so I go upstairs and argue about the clocks going
forward and how that's only for the benefit of Scottish sheep and they
can't tell the bloody time anyway, and then Adam says something about
someone buying a big car because they feel 'safe' so I say 'Why doesn't
she learn to drive safely, if she's so chicken-shit she should get off
the bloody road and someone said that the safest car is one with a
spike sticking up out of the steering column, that would stop the
buggers talking on their bloody mobile phones..etc, etc'. And then
Caroline, My Boss makes a funny-not-so-ha-ha about 'did I switch the
cooker off this morning ?' (I didn't tell you about that , not very
interesting, and anyway I HATE working for women 'cos I can't tell them
to fuck-off , I think it's something to do with my useless Public
School education that my mother tells me is so useful and I want to ask
her why aren't I a bloody millionaire then ?), and then I find I still
can't do what I wanted to do because the bloody IT bastards can't
change my bloody password and then I try to use the bloody facs machine
and a bit later Lesley comes and tells me that my bloody facs hasn't
even got out of the bloody building because I didn't put a 9 in front
of the number and then I ask for something to do and I'm given
something that I haven't got a bloody clue about and then Steve The
Boss has a meeting about our outsourcing and it all goes DOWNHILL in
the afternoon and Darren comes up to me and says he's solved my problem
in three hours and I've been looking at it for weeks and then I drive
back to Croydon and I get to the gym and I haven't brought a proper
vest so I have to exercise in my t-shirt and DON'T believe
all
that SHIT about a bit of gardening keeping you fit because I was
absolutely BANJAXED after 20 minutes on the x-trainer and 18 minutes on
the bike and I didn't have either of them as high as I should have.
So I got home, had a V8, drank half a bottle of wine and ate some kind
of salami that's been in the fridge for yonks, watched
brainless tv and I'm listening to Late Night Junction on Radio 3 while
I'm typing this.
Will tomorrow be any better, or will it just be
worse ?
Monday,24/10/2005
Widdle.Widdlewiddlewiddlewiddlewiddlewiddlewiddlewiddlewiddle...wAAADDELLL...weeeeee-yah-kapow-wah-wah-wee-oooo....KERPOW-KERRAAAAAAAAAANG!!
Last Wednesday I went to watch and listen to Steve Vai. Never heard of
him ? Well, as a teenager he used to play lead guitar for Frank Zappa.
He did the bits that Frank didn't quite feel up to. Basically, he's one
of the foremost exponents of widdly, shreddy, tastefully-tasteless
heavy rock guitar. He's rather good at it, actually, and he and his
merry band of men, The Breed, entertained us at the Hammersmith Apollo.
If you don't like clever, smart-arse rock guitar, you wouldn't have
enjoyed it. He's so clever he sometimes plays seven-string guitars
(six-stringers are too easy, doncha know ?). The rest of the band are
all musical geniuses as well. I thought he was great, and since the
band played for two-and-a-half hours solid I think they gave damned
good value, too. But I won't need to go to another
rawk'nd-ROOOOOOOOOOOOOLL gig for a very long time.
Anything else I can tell you about ? Well, I went to B & Q's on
Thursday and spent £50 on flooring for the attic and stones
for
the back garden (I'll do anything rather than go the gym, won't I ?)
Friday night's pizza delivery gave My Empress a bad stomach. Again. She
keeps ordering pizzas from somewhere in Croydon, and they
always taste fantastic, but she's always the one who's running for the
loo for the next few days. Of course, we could order Indian, and the
Croydon Indians are pretty damn good, but then it's yours truly who
spends the weekend looking for gents' loos. Saturday saw us at the
local flick-house: we saw 'Serenity', a bit of sci-fi. And very good it
was too.
And yesterday, I decided to be useful around the place. I need to earn
those brownie points, or else My Sweetness gets, well, Shirty. With a
Capital Shirt. So I went to the tip, spoke to my mother, watched Marco
Melandri beat Rossi in Turkey, and dug up the back garden. As I said,
I'll do ANYTHING not to go to the gym, but I think I'll have to go
there tomorrow night, 'cos I'll be going to work in the car tomorrow.
The reason : my motorbiking boots and gloves are leaking, and they
won't have dried out from the two drownings I got this morning and
tonight.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I must pick up my guitar and do MY impression
of Steve Vai: 'Wid. Dell. Waaa. Phut. Plinkity. Plonkity..... Plunk.'
Look, I just need more practice.....
Sunday,16/10/2005.
I am living in Interesting Times. In the firm I work for 1500 do
related work (or something on a more stratospheric level). We are being
outsourced. This time next year I will be working for someone else,
although I'll probably be doing the same job. In three years
time I might be doing something new and interesting, or I
might be let go, as they used to say to downstairs staff in the 1920's.
The head of the department had a meeting with all the teams after : he
aluded to my great age. I'm thinking of buying a wig. I will definitely
be buying a suit, a white shirt and a new tie for interview time. And
because I'm me I'm thinking of buying a pair of cowboy boots. If
they're good enough for the most powerful man in the world, they must
be ok for me. In fact, I'm thinking of buying a ten-gallon hat too. And
the MD obviously thinks he wants to keep us sweet, for the near future
at least. He asked us all to the boardroom, where he told us how
important we would be for the next three years, but he wasn't too sure
about what happens after that. We're doing much better than another
department ,though. Their jobs are being outsourced to Budapest. NOBODY
will be asked to relocate. I bet the MD won't be talking to them in the
boardroom, somehow.
My Queen and I went out with Ken and Yetta on Friday night, to eat
mussels and drink beer in a Belgian pub restaurant in Bromley. Her
Majesty didn't like it : stone floors and a noisy crowd meant we
couldn't really talk to each other.
But we've booked our New Year. Do they do a decent curry in Dubrovnik
?
Sunday,09/10/2005
Hello, nosey people. I'm sorry I haven't written for a month, but,
basically, it would not have been a thriller.
What can I tell you? Oh yes, two weeks ago I had my hair cut (yes, that
IS interesting by my standards!). But My Sweetheart cut it, and one
Sunday she gave me a Number Zero. On Monday I went into work and
everybody thought I looked like an Evil German - all I needed was the
duelling scar. And last Thursday I had a drink with my mate
Ken.
This week I were mostly on a course in Heathrow. I stayed
there at the expense of my employers because when
I'm on a course I cant be arsed commuting around the bloody M25. Some
people do it every day, but if they had any sense they would jack their
jobs in and work nearer to home. Life is worth more than wedge,
sometimes, I feel. Anyway, I got off at junction 13..and could I find
the place ? Of course not! After riding round the airport perimeter for
an hour I finally found the hotel, so I called in and asked them the
way to 'Clockhouse Place'. Just down the road they said, and
I got there about 10.25. I had ridden about twice the mileage I should
have done, and had started off before 8, and I got in for about 10.25.
Luckily, everybody was introducing themselves, so I just had time to
sit down and tell them that I was Stephenstephen.
And, of course, for the next two days, I couldn't find the hotel when I
left the course. The thing is, Heathrow has no landmarks (well, pilots
wouldn't want to take off in their 777s if they knew they had to swerve
to the right because there was a hundred foot tall Macdonald's 'M' in
the way, would they ? Also, I think I should tell you that if you get
into Bedfont or Feltham, there are NO sensible road signs. I think it's
because of 'HM Young Offender Institution and Remand Centre Feltham',
to give it its proper name. You see, they don't want any teenage
Jack-the-Lad getting out and actually getting away. So,if they're not
born there, they'll spend several hours walking around in circles, by
which time they will have been caught by the local constabulary.
Eventually, I found that it was a 2 mile, seven minute ride.
And yesterday (Saturday), we went out with Trev and Paula. Paula has
come back from Madeira, and so we ate Chinese for lunch and retired to
the Ship of Fools, where we partook of a couple of bottles of wine.
Well, three of us did, Paula wasn't drinking.
One notable thing happened. A bloke came up to us as we were sitting
around the table and told Trev that he was thirty. He said he had come
with his Dad. How old was Trevor ? How old was his Dad ? Trev's Dad is
dead and would be about 85 by now. When was Trev's birthday ? Trev said
when it was , and the bloke said 'It's on a Thursday this year', and
then, after a few more questions and answers he walked away and sat
down with his Dad, who had bought him a pint.
We had realised by this time that he was suffering from Asperger's
Syndrome, or some kind of autism (apparently they're not the
same).
AS
I said at the beginning, I
haven't been kidnapped by evil villains, I haven't saved the world and
got The Beautiful Girl at the end. My life will not be made into a
Spielberg movie. Well, not the last month, anyway.
Tuesday,20/09/2005
A slow day, working from home today. There's a bit to tell you, but
it's not very interesting, and it could start me on a rant....I've
archived off most of this year.
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