As I'm now a little bit better...

...I feel the desire to share with you a small story I heard on the radio this evening. This occurred in London, but could've happened anywhere really.

The main protagonist in this story had left her car in the same parking space that she'd parked in for 18 months. On returning to the car one day, she discovered it was missing - and that freshly painted double yellow lines* were painted on the road where it had been. She knew it hadn't been stolen (for the very simple reason that the car battery was in her flat being recharged after going flat) and assumed it had been removed so that the lines could be painted.

It took her three days to find her car, as the clampers hadn't bothered to report it as being in their pound. They then demanded a large amount of money to give it back. Undeterred, the owner demanded photographic proof of her transgression (as one can do by law) and was sent a series of photos of her car parked on the double yellow lines.

She contacted her local MP, and rightly pointed out that the photos must have been faked as the car was undriveable and she had witnesses to this effect. Her MP contacted the council, whom instantly backed down (this whole process had taken two months!)

What had really happened? Well the clampers arrived with the road workers, lifted the car onto their truck, waited until the lines were painted and then put the car back, clamped it for being parked illegally, and towed it away in an attempt to make a vast sum of cash.

I feel justified in summing the whole story up in a word:

Bastards.



*You can't park on double yellow lines in the UK without getting a ticket.

P.S. Mrs. Red Squirrel is coming out of hospital today. Thanks to everyone for the good wishes :)

Sorry...

Now I've got the flu, will update this and emails when staring at the screen doesn't give me a huge headache.

Because I am still awake....

In my last blog I described how we'd run the catering for the stewards of certain major festivals in 2007. I probably didn't explain how the combination of the wettest summer ever (officially so) and devious business partners drove me to suffer trenchfoot and give me my first minor breakdown.

A sobering - literally - experience.

I was reminded of this recently because festival season is starting soon, and found this amazing video showing exactly what things were like in 2007. Bear in mind when you watch this that we were on site already and served food 24 hours a day during this flooding despite being several inches under water ourselves (we had a raised floor because we're not stupid and tried to plan ahead). We were fucking heroes.

http://www.youtube.com/v/1h2b_PpOWpo

P.S. I realise some of the guys in this video are, well, dicks, but I can't change that. The way water is flooding in to the back of the van is fantastic.

Oops, sorry.

Didn't mean to be cryptic in my last post! I had an astonishingly, amazing evening on Thursday but before I got back to write it up I got a garbled phone message from Mrs. Red Squirrel saying that she was 'in hospital' with a 'fever' and that someone was going to 'operate on her legs'.

And that was all I heard, and I got no reply after that.

To say I was disconcerted would win the the 'Stiff Upper Lip - Reward for English Understatement in the Face of Extreme Fucking Circumstances' award.

I've finally got in contact today and she's very ill in hospital with an infected wound and will be there for several days - incidentally I find the bedside manner of 'had you not come to the hospital then you'd be 99% likely to be dead right now' to be less than desired.

It's a situation that the three and a half thousand miles distance kind of sucks balls. We're hoping this can change before the end of the year....

Hmmm

I was going to write a happy and enjoyable tale about my week.

But for certain reasons I won't be doing so.

Hmmmm.....

It's the little differences...

Today I found out that:

"The Met Office says it is too early to tell whether it will be a very hot summer this year, but the signs so far are that it will be warmer than our last two summers and conditions could well trigger its heatwave warning system.

In London, this would mean daytime temperatures had exceeded 32C and night-time temperatures were over 18C degrees. In the North West, it would be 30C and 15C, respectively."

I can't just be me that finds it hilarious that a heatwave in London is at 32C (that's 90F) but one in 'the North West' - a mere 150 miles away - is at 30C (86F)?

Having said that, I can sort of see the point - rumours are that the temperature around Manchester last reached 30C about 100 million years ago when what became England was positioned roughly over the area we now call Oman.

I'm not sure I even want to guess at what is considered a heatwave in Scotland... :)

You lookin' at me?

<Removed for Political reasons>

Yes, I know...

I realise I haven't been posting much recently - a heady combination of nothing much happening (that I can talk about anyway), being very tired and lazyarseitis.

I'm not even supposed to be here today. I'm supposed to be London for my football team's final home game of the season, however Royal Bastard Mail lost my ticket along the way so I couldn't go.

We won though, and I was in no way watching an illegal stream of the game this afternoon. No way at all.

So, seeing as I have an unexpected few spare hours, I shall share a couple of things with you. Firstly, the story of Ireland's most romantic man (courtesy of The Register):

Ireland's 'most romantic man' is complete wanker
Craic'd one off while following women

Ireland's most romantic man has been stripped of his crown following protests that he'd been convicted of "committing two acts which were offensive to public morals and decency", viz; "following women around Galway City in his car while masturbating".

Aidan Clifford and partner Ellen Spence, who met on a skiing trip in 2007, "beat off stiff opposition"* to secure the Irish Wedding Journal's "Ireland’s Most Romantic Couple" title.

According to The Clare People, the pair won a €46,000 prize, which included "a wedding reception in the renowned Parknasilla Resort in Kerry, a designer wedding dress from either Kathy de Stafford in Dublin or Blush Bridal in Belfast and a luxury Sandals honeymoon from Tropical Places".

However, the Irish Wedding Journal was unaware that Clifford appeared last year in Galway District Court where he admitted driving to Galway on his days off from work "specifically to follow women around in his car while fondling himself".

According to the Evening Herald, his solicitor claimed Clifford's lifestyle was to blame and that he was "working himself to the bone".**

The couple currently live in Kinvara, County Galway, but Clifford works in nearby Ballyvaughan, where unimpressed residents queued up to express their outrage. One declared the whole thing a "total disgrace", adding: "My own grandchildren play down in Ballyvaughan all the time. It’s bad enough to think that this man is around, never mind putting him up on a pedestal like this."
Another insisted there was “a lot of animosity here about it. Everybody is disgusted."

The Irish Wedding Journal duly responded by withdrawing the couple's €46k booty. The magazine told the Evening Herald: "The nature of his conviction is entirely incompatible with the ethos of Ireland's Wedding Journal and the competition and we regard his entering this competition in the first place as a breach of good faith on his part.

"With regret we have come to the decision that no prize will be awarded this year."

*Snigger
**Double snigger.


And secondly, someone sent me this on email. Google Street View protecting the anonymity of innocent people superbly:

Whatever will they think of next?

Just look at this store in Brooklyn:


A store that sells things for 99 cents.

Or more than 99 cents.

Or even, wait for it, less than 99 cents.

Wow! A store that sells things for 'a price between zero and infinity (in cents)'. Radical. Even better, they actually marked each item with a little sticker showing the individual price of the item!! Ker-razy!!

I dream of the day I get to see such a store in poor old England. We lack the technology :(

There will be blood. And Kung Po Chicken.

Picture the scene, if you will. Or don't, I'm not going to get all Hitler on you if you choose not to.

But if you do, picture the scene of two young (*cough*) lovers walking arm in arm down a street in the nicer end of Brooklyn, both hankering for a chinese meal on their final day together before parting again.

During their slow stroll past cars holding fourteen people, cars 'customised' by someone colourblind and with a love of Bauhaus, and women wheeling pushchairs holding obese babies counterbalanced with two KFC bargain buckets hanging off the handles, our young lovers rejected the first chinese restaurant they passed for 'serving fish'.

Because our young lovers take all their decisions together. Apparently.

The second, and most definitely only other, chinese restaurant they passed was packed - and with a huge crowd of people waiting to be seated. Undeterred, our dashing male lead walks straight to the counter and asks in his poshest English accent if despite not having a reservation, whether they 'could seat my good lady and I'?

Table for two? Right this way - take your pick of 3 tables.

Um....what? The young couple chose a booth. Then looked back at the packed waiting area glaring at them and realised why. One was a big group that were waiting for a table to be free. The other two couples were too fat to sit in a booth.

Not just fat. Orca fat. Own-orbiting-satellites fat.

Our dashing lead half expected Captain Ahab to come crashing though the front window at any moment to claim his prize - the great white whale.

After they'd ordered, the next table that became free was given to one of these couples. The wife especially was gross, and took up the whole of one side of a table (they had to remove one of the chairs as there wasn't room for her and it) while hilariously one of the waters subtly tested the chair in the waiting room to see if it was broken.

All was fine until the soup arrived, along with three middle-aged women who weren't obese - just that very fat weeble-with-legs look. These three women knew Ms. Blowhole as they'd all lived near each other in a place full of refineries called 'Staaten Oiland' about 20 years ago.

Five looooong minutes of screeched conversation a foot away from our heroes ensued after which a waiter finally pleaded with them to sit down.

In the booth behind the young couple.

The beautiful young lady leaned forward and whispered, "Great, now we get to hear about their entire lives."

"Surely not," our English lead replied, "now they've sat down they ought to shut up."

They did.

For five minutes. Then they did what any sane and conscientious people would do and continued their conversation with Ms. Blowhole at full volume - right across the young couple's table. And what a doozy of a conversation it was:

"Do you remember that house we lived in, back on Staaten Oiland?"
"The one down the street from the one we lived in, back on Staaten Oiland?"
"Yes, that one, back on Staaten Oiland. Well we moved after the neighbour extended his decking past our steps."
"No!" *gasp*
"Yes! We told him, the boundary is up to our front door. Not our steps. It's not how we do things on Staaten Oiland."
"No, on Staaten Oiland we treat people with respect. Do you remember those shops round the corner?"
"Round the corner from the house we had back on Staaten Oiland?"
"Yes, those shops - just down from the house we had on Staaten Oiland. Well they've been refurbished and opened up as shops."
"No!" *gasp taking in almost all the oxygen in the room*
"Yes! As shops, but different ones to when you lived on Staaten Oiland."

For. Twenty. Minutes.

Our young couple had been incapable of hearing each other over this torrent of facts vital to world security and had resorted to shouting at each other. At one point when Ms. Blowhole had stopped long enough to swallow an egg roll whole, our dashing hero commented that talking over other people was a tad 'fucking rude'.

They shut up again for five minutes while Ms. Blowhole inhaled a small lamb and spat out the bones.

"AMANDA! Do you remember Amanda? She lived down the street from that house we lived in, back on Staaten Oiland."

Exit one young couple halfway through the meal. The Staaten Oiland Fat Club* had driven them from their food.





*The first rule of Staaten Oiland Fat Club is 'No fucking lettuce.'**
**The second rule of Staaten Oiland Fat Club is 'No FUCKING lettuce, capiche?'

A brief interlude...

....before I get on with the posts that have been sitting around to be posted for a fortnight now.

I posted a couple of months ago about a company football game where one department (staffed with young, regular players - as well as a couple of girls) took on all the other departments (staffed with old, fat men) in a 90 minute try-not-to-have-a-heart-attack 'game' where us old people managed to lose 14-1.

*ahem*

Well last weekend I organised the rematch. They had the same team, whereas I cunningly drafted in a few decent guys to make it an even match. My organising was going swimmingly until five days before the game when our three best players all reported back injured from the weekend's games and pulled out.

Oops.

I cajoled one player out of retirement and two people brought 'mates' along on the day. I've put mates in quotes because our goalkeeper turned up ten minutes before kick-off having not stopped drinking all night and had dragged along someone he'd met in the pub the previous night who 'fancied a game.'

All in all, a recipe for an absolute stuffing. Again.

And indeed, our goalkeeper lasted all of twenty seconds before trying to catch one of three balls he could see - completely missing it - and letting it dribble slowly and sadly into the net.

We managed to get to half-time only losing 3-0. I even hit the crossbar in our one decent chance.

Enter Super Squirrel Manager who changed the team round, put myself out on the left wing (as I was the only person in our team who could still run), reorganised the defence and gave a rousing speech along the lines of 'let's kick 'em a bit and see where it gets us'.

Within five minutes of the restart we'd pulled it back to 3-2, then let in a silly goal, then piled forward and got it back to 4-3. They started to panic and substituted off their only girl and replaced her with a six-foot-four-brick-shithouse of a player.

We pressed and pressed but just couldn't get an equaliser, and then two late goals on the break and an even later consolation for us made it 6-4.

Which I'm sure you'll agree is better than 14-1 :)

Here is actual proof of yours truly lining up a swift punt to the nuts of the player in blue. I even got part of the ball first.... :-P


P.S. My arms are incredibly pasty because I'm wearing a long-sleeved top with white sleeves, my left leg is pasty because I'm wearing a white elasticated bandage to stop my knee parting with a sad 'boing' noise, and my right leg is pasty because I'm very pasty.

Bonus Drunken Post!

It's 3:30am and I don't care. I'm up late because it's my girlfriend's birthday and we don't share the same continent so I'm working off island time - kapesh?

So in the true tradition of drunken (yet impeccably spelt) posts, here are 5 things about me I've never revealed before. I reserve the right to delete this post when I wake up tomorrow)

1) I'm allergic to everything. Not a joke either. I have bad eczema exacerbated by cats, dogs, heat, cold, soap, any cleaning product, rubber, anything acidic, anything alkali, anyone coughing near me or potentially existing in the same universe. Basically - it's your fault :)

1a) And when I say 'allergic' - a mere second in the presence of any surfactant will make my skin fall apart, often in real time.

2) I hate boats. I hate anything on water. I struggle to cross bridges. The mere concept on being on water freaks me out. I blame this entirely on a) seeing Jaws aged 8 and b) my Dad dropping me in the Canal de Bourgogne and despite my frenzied pleas to get out of said canal, being denied. I probably can't swim. I'd probably do a Moses if forced.

3) My first real girlfriend gave me hepatitis and destroyed half my liver forever. She did that by cheating on me in our month's 'trial period' after two years of going out. I can never forgive this.

4) I often think the world would be improved by 3,000,000,000 people dying. At least.

5) As a consequence of point 4, I'm not sure I deserve to be in the right half.....

Forgive me.

I say!

Someone from the US Department of Justice* decided to use my blog to learn how to speak Bristolian.

Should I be worried?








Oh, and I promise to do the New York posts this weekend. Been mega-busy/ill/a lazy fuck.




*Oxymoron, define thyself.

:(

Not well.

Probably not swine flu. Could be though - the hideous pig at work sneezed at me today so maybe that counts?

Bleurgh.

Well I did say I'd make excuses.....

Okay, okay, still not ready with the New York posts. I've been really busy, like, with, um, work and, sleeping, and, um, football and, um, sleeping and stuff.

But in a break from boringly hilarious holiday posts I thought I'd share with you a few stories from my favourite satirical website:

In a week (or so) when a senior anti-terrorist policeman had to resign for letting a photographer see the entire TOP SECRET agenda for his briefing to the cabinet, and subsequently 11 men were seized ahead of schedule by armed cops, interrogated and then released without charge and deported by government officials who refuse to admit that the entire government, police and intelligence community are, in fact, 'retards' - this

In a week where the government admitted to having to borrow £175bn (that's billion, and I hope it's a nice american billion of 1,000,000,000 and not an english billion of 1,000,000,000,000) a year for the next five years just to pay off the debt run up this year - this

And as an aside, I'm buying one of these bad boys :)

Holy crap.

Pretty much literally.

http://whythatsdelightful.wordpress.com/2009/04/21/dont-fear-the-baby-preacher/

I'm not sure if the baby's impersonation of a nutter preacher is funnier than the fact that clearly the audience really don't get it.

You decide :)

(Shamefully nicked from Graham Linehan's blog http://whythatsdelightful.wordpress.com/ - plus he wrote Big Train, one of the funniest comedy programs ever. In fact, I feel the need to watch the World Staring Championships again. My sense of humour to a T :) )

The following trailers are appropriate for the feature presentation...

I'm dying of no sleep, but am up to Wednesday last week in your lives and thoroughly entertaining they are :)

The highlights of the coming week on Passably Content are:

• Whale seen off Staaaten Oiland.
• Why fundamentalist nutjob jewish people are ok by me.
• A series of poor excuses about not posting stuff previously promised (again).

Night night.

How times change....

Just popping in for a few seconds to say hello - I'll reply to comments when I'm back :)

I remember being in some godforsaken part of Arizona around my 15th birthday when I first bought an American newspaper.

It seemed a fair thing to do, seeing as Saddam had just invaded Kuwait and it was undecided if he was going to continue on into Saudi Arabia. We were just heading into a diner for breakfast (possibly even a Wendy's) and saw the headline of the NY Times as we passed the newsstand. Obviously this was news to us so we bought and read it over my first serious cultural mistake (bacon is not bacon, eggs are not eggs and toast was not toast - making my bacon and egg sarnie a herculean effort requiring diamond teeth and a strong stomach).

I was reminded of this today as I passed a newsstand on the way to saying hello to Mrs. Red Squirrel (who is at work today) and saw the headline of the NY Times. It was something about pirates off the coast of Somalia (or rather, that the first american captured had reached Mombasa - but I digress). Did I buy it? No. I'd been following the story daily on the internet for the last 5 months, I'd received texts about the american hijacking and rescue and I'd been forced (at the airport while waiting for one of three immigration officials to process 75,000 people in the queue - people wanting into the country? At an airport? Who'd'a'thunkit?) to listen to interviews with the distant cousins of the bosun on the ship on CNN.

How times change.....

Have a nice day y'all!

Yes indeedy, I'm stateside right now for a week or so.

So, I'll check in from time to time, but y'all have fun and I'll catch up with everyone's lives when I'm back :)

Language, Timothy!

(If you're not English you won't get that reference at all. Then you'll google it and be confronted by Ronnie Corbett. Then you'll write off Western Europe as 'here be dragons')

As someone who both:

a) uses language and
b) hears language

I feel myself uniquely qualified to pontificate all kind of bollocks about the written word.

I'm in a select club.

Especially when it comes to the American (mis)use of the English language. You do realise that we're just loaning it to you right? Did we not mention it? Shame. Ker-ching!

The big schism between 'American English' and the rare dialect known as 'English' (named after the country 'England' by the way) happened during the horrendous vowel cull of 1847, when decent, honest, law-abiding vowels were obliterated from words for no reason beyond petty word vandalism.

Axe became 'Ax', colour became 'color', favour became 'favor', Aluminium became 'something spelt the same yet perversely pronounced with a syllable less, for fucks sake.'

And most dangerously of all, a paedophile became 'pedophile'.

Dangerous you say? Why dangerous? Well, in England the 'paedo' prefix is related to children (paediatrician for example) and 'pedo' is related to walking (pedometer for example).

So - if in America a device that records how much you walk is a 'pedometer', and a kiddie-fiddler is 'pedophile'.....


....what is the American term for someone who likes walking? And do they get lynched?

Spring is in the air...

Hmmm, well I'll leave my last post unaltered as a reminder to everybody of what happens when you get home at 2am from a cracking party with free booze and then decide to write a blog post.

My general disdain for our modern culture is quite evident after 12 pints :)

This is a great time of year - not only is Charlie Brooker back with a brand new series called Newswipe:

Episode 1 (part 1)
Episode 1 (part 2)
Episode 1 (part 3)

Episode 2 (part 1)
Episode 2 (part 2)
Episode 2 (part 3)

but also because this time of year is when the Magnolia trees blossom :)


Lovely - and that's just one tree!

Sorry

I try to avoid the political as much as I can but:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7982277.stm

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrghhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

You took a risk, you lost your money. Tough shit.

Let's look at why you invested there, shall we? Did you do so because of the obscene interest rates on offer? Was it? Or did you just fancy Iceland?

Cunts.

Ever heard of a free lunch? Never happened did it? You bunch of utter cunts.

But no, why doesn't the government pay for your inability to NOT BE AN UTTER RETARD?

Fuck off. Take your loss and suck it up. I'll only accept government money if you promise to never, ever, knock on my door again and ask for money. Ever. Again.

Sympathy levels at record lows.....neeeed...... heeeeeeeeelllllppppp.........

Better late than never!

Well, actually, you might be saying exactly the opposite in a few short minutes as most of my pictures are absolute rubbish!

Still the best ones are:

A very, very happy looking cat (my Dad's, though those are my tasteful orange socks with 'Friday' written on them)




Possibly the sweet shop in the world - Happy Pills!




Happy Pill's recipe for happiness. You should be able to read it by clicking on the image but it was raining heavily at the time so if you can't let me know and I'll painstakingly type it out by hand....




Barcelona FC have won THIS many trophies. Probably many times over.




Why look, it's a big wall. From the Montjuic Castello in fact.




The view back down into Barcelona from the castle.

Hola!

I got back at half past midnight last night after an 8 hour journey consisting of taxi, plane, train, tube, tube, train and finally taxi again.

Thank you all for the b'day wishes :)

I actually went to work today as well. I think this officially qualifies me for god-like status amongst the mere mortals of my workplace.

Anyway, fings wat I lurnt this weekend:

• Children, and especially teenagers, require a mute switch
• Gaudi really was a bugalugs nutjob, though the world would be a poorer place without him
• Camp Nou is shabby, and I'd frankly rather get changed in a train toilet than the Visitor's Changing Room
• Teenagers in big groups are a problem only solved with a hand grenade
• My subconscious reaction on losing my footing on an uneven wet pavement is to exclaim 'Oh, my word!' - proving that I am most definitely both English, and a child of the the 1860s
• A siesta is a deeply civilised invention
• Chillies, shallow fried and coated with salt, beat a bag of peanuts when it comes to bar snacks
• Tapas rules
• More pubs in the centre of Barcelona were showing the England match than the Spain game, despite the English one being a friendly
• Google are (apparently) an evil corporation intent on taking over the world and stealing your thoughts
• I would quite like to own a ferret, provided I can take it for walks on a leash
• The inventor of the device that makes you talk like Donald Duck on crack deserves a painful, horrible death
• A man gently playing a small kettle drum is not a 'man playing a wok' (could've fooled me on that one)
• Walking along the street with your mobile loudly distorting music on loudspeaker is normal behaviour for a certain section of society I call 'shits'
• The Spanish will eat anything with eyes

Pics tomorrow - including the recipe for happiness, the happiest looking cat, and a big wall.

Laters

(Or 'goodbye' for those outside of England.)

Seeing as it is my birthday on Saturday, I'm doing what any sensible person with less money than an Icelandic bank would do.

I'm fucking off to Barcelona for the weekend.

So, behave yourselves while I'm gone.

I'll be back.

This Charming Man

Overheard in a pub between a mid-to-late-twenties man and a slightly older woman:

"41? You're 41? Wow - you must have been stunning twenty years ago!"

Smooooooooooooooth.

Breaking News!

I loaded the BBC News homepage this afternoon to be confronted by the most stunning and shocking headline I've seen for a long time:

Austrian Fritzl sentenced to life

Nooooooooooooooooooooooo! I had my money down on an acquittal! I mean, yes, some might say that seeing as he imprisoned his daughter for 24 years, raped her repeatedly, fathered 7 children by her and let one of them die and then had the audacity to plead guilty to all charges, that in fact such a headline could be filed under:

Stating the fucking obvious

What will we get next?

Scientists claim 'Earth is round'

or

Global recession caused by greedy wankers with too many Porsches

or possibly

Politician admits to never having told the truth


Huh. I want better headlines than that! I want to see (and one of these includes an actual headline - see if you can guess which one before clicking on a link):

Pope urges poor black people to get Aids and die. 'I vill complete ze fuhrer's verk' pontificated the Pontiff.

Disgraced Banker can keep massive reward for gross spasticity. Government claims 'we can only invent unjust laws against those with no money, so he gets off'.

Outrage as Minister claims that study into dying bees 'not a priority'. Brown flimsily claims that 'two wars and a recession kind of distracted me.'

French strike yet again. Sarkozy rejects as 'outrageous' opposition claims that his economic policies have forced ordinary French people 'to do work'.

America deports former Nazi for war crimes. White House states 'the only way to get away with war crimes in the US is to be Dick Cheney or Donald Rumsfeld. We're pretty sure he was neither.'

Mugabe makes plea for help. 'I've destroyed this country good and proper and now there's not enough money to buy me a new Mercedes for my birthday. Please send cash.'

Government discovers that borrowing vast sums of money with little income leads to a situation where you are 'fucked.'

Man paid a lot of money to 'predict the collapse of society' fails to look out of the window and gets it wrong by 21 years.

I'm available for hire as a headline writer at my usual email address :)

Every which way but loose (wires)

I'm very proud of myself.

I changed the light switch in my bathroom.

While that may not sound particularly impressive to most people, with this particular light switch it's most definitely the crowning achievement of my year so far. Let me provide some background....

I live in a top floor flat of one of many Victorian terraced buildings in my street. Note that by Victorian I'm meaning Queen Victoria's reign (so in this case something built about 1880). My particular flat was once part of the whole house. Sadly the whole house was owned by an Evil Demented Builder who 'self-converted' the house into two flats (one with the attic, one with the basement). Examples of the genius of the Evil Demented Builder include:

Putting the boiler in the kitchen
Getting the boiler to pump the hot water into a PLASTIC tank in the roof space.
Making this plastic tank holding boiling water an OPEN PLASTIC TANK
Letting this open plastic tank drain into another, smaller, OPEN FUCKING PLASTIC TANK
Letting this smaller open plastic tank feed the radiators

I'd estimate the overall efficiency of this entire process at maybe 4%. My gas bills would've been huge, if only I hadn't soon discovered that you couldn't have the heating on for more than an hour every 12 hours. I discovered this the day (a week after moving in) my brand new sofa was delivered. My brand new cream and pale green sofa (it was tasteful in the 90s, so there). My brand new sofa that was placed directly below the plastic tanks in the roof space the day I accidentally left the heating on in the morning before going to work. Of course the tanks melted and dumped roughly 100 litres of water straight through the ceiling and all over the sofa. Thank heaven for Scotchguard - the best £20 I ever spent.

Anyway, the point is that Evil Demented Builder was a twunt, and that Evil Demented Builder did the wiring.

Oh yes.

So when the toggle switch for the light in the bathroom (that's the actual bathroom btw, not the toilet, for the septics out there) went, I unscrewed the housing with some trepidation. Even after shutting off the electricity for the whole flat I was nervous, for Evil Demented Builder was also a colourblind epileptic with a fetish for bare wires. For all I knew, this particular wire was on the same circuit as the house two doors down.

So on Alfaman's advice (Happy Birthday btw) I went to B&Q to buy a new light switch and a circuit tester. The circuit tester was easy - they were expensive so I didn't get one - so instead I bought one of those little screwdrivers with a bulb that lights up when it's touching something live. They were cheap :)

Buying a replacement switch however? Hmmmm.

I found the electrical section. I found the bathroom electrical section. I even found the toggle switches for bathroom electrical section. Therein lay my problem. There was an entire section of these things, all with helpful cords to pull to test the action. I narrowed it down to the cheapo ones (I'm not proud) but even then I was presented with a choice of (outwardly identical) 1-way, 2-way, 3-way, 4-way and 6-way (6!?! I'm not sure I even know what a 6-way is) toggle switches.

Brilliantly they came in little plastic bags with the wiring diagram folded up inside. There was no way of knowing what the inside looked like (my only reference point was what the inside of the one on my ceiling looked like). I asked the advice of a passing B&Q salesperson whom was possibly more acne than face, and received the ever-so-helpful response of 'Dunno mate.'

Thanks. For. That.

I went home and stared at the ceiling some more. Then showered in the dark for another week.

The following Saturday (also known as Yesterday) I went back to B&Q and stared at the switches daring them to crack and own up to being the one I needed. After twenty minutes I gave up and bought a 2-way as it's my lucky number.

And it still is. Result!

Once I'd checked the power was definitely off, changing the switch took less than five minutes. So after three weeks of saving energy (quite a bit seeing as the fan which turns on at the same time as the light appears to have been fashioned from the engine of a Jumbo Jet) I'm back to normal. At least now I can identify which toothbrush is which in the morning....

Bowls

I'm getting better. Well, a little bit. Honest. If you don't count the pseudo-superhero plate made from a mold in the background - that was filler in the last week while I was waiting for the kiln to fire.

Sieg Hiel!

Okay, blah blah, I've promised the funny work one for ages, blah, on it's way, blah blah.

Now that's out of the way, let's talk football. Not boring proper, professional football, no - let's talk sweaty locals kicking thin air and falling over football.

Yes, let's talk about me playing football :(

We recently played a football match between 'Big Department' versus 'Other Departments'.

It seemed fair.

It wasn't.

Average age difference between the sides = 14 years (note:- in their favour, the young bastards)

Average weight difference = 4 stone (note:- that's me on the left. I was the thinnest player. The guy on the right was either 8 months pregnant, smuggling a football or possibly a fat whale)

We lost.

14-1.

To a side with 2 girls in it (note:- bugger off, they played in defence and the ball never got that far).


A line is drawn *glares*


Onto other things, the few members of the above team (who could walk) met in the pub tonight. We had a good long discussion about the contractor - and ex-colleague of mine - who got fired for gross insubordination/drunkeness/racial abuse/starting a fight/being a twat at the end of last year.

[Long story. Lawyers demand it stays as such.]

I stated that up until the episode in question, that the person involved had been 'ok, if a bit arrogant now and then'.

One of our footballers tonight seized on this in a moment of righteous indignation - "A bit arrogant!!! A bit arrogant!!! How arrogant was Hitler when he started?," he says, raising his right arm to shoulder height with palm flat in front of him, "This high?!?!," he exclaimed, raising his arm a few inches higher, "Or this high?!?!"

.....

I don't think I've ever laughed as hard in my life as that moment (um, in public anyway). I think I wet myself.

NOTE TO THOSE WITH NO SENSE OF HUMOUR:
I'm laughing at someone who throws a nazi salute by accident to prove a point that Hitler was bad. I'm not condoning the holocaust. Stop emailing me. If you think I'm being anti-semitic then kindly fuck off and die. Try and improve the world like a diseased buffalo on the edge of the herd that sacrifices itself to the lions to let the majority live.....

Monica Lewinsky is back!

Meh, you've probably already had that on email. I'm lazy, sue me.

Football? What football?

I don't particularly wish to talk about football today after seeing my team lose the Carling Cup final on penalties yesterday. If someone really, really *wants* to talk to me about football today they will be dealt that expressive shrug and non-committal grunt that the french manage to sum up in the word 'bof'.

Lots of people have seen that shrug today. Bastards.

Anyway, to think of happier times let me relate to you the tale of the funniest thing I ever saw at a football match - if you don't count the five-way mascot brawl at half time during a game at my local(ish) team Bristol City.

You can read all about that here under the heading 'The Wolf and the Pigs - a Modern Tale'. There's even a link to a video of it should you doubt my veracity.

No, while this story also occurred at Ashton Gate (the home ground of Bristol City), it doesn't involve anyone dressed up as a pig. It happened while I was still at university, back in the distant past known as 'the mid-90s'. Someone had told a group of us that Bristol City were organising a sporting quiz competition. Being experienced quizzers (i.e. smart-arsed gits), five of us headed down to try and win some goodies.

Turnout was low so we were split into two teams.

My team of two finished second to the rest of our group by 8 points. We were over 100 points ahead of third place. Sadly, all we won were about 45 tickets to Bristol City home games - a team none of us supported.

It was at one of these free games that I got to see my first glimpse of Junior Agogo, which contrary to first impressions wasn't a board game for kids but was a new signing at the Gate. Junior was one of those pacey, tricksy wingers that are too good for the lower reaches of football but simply not good enough to make the big-time. He was also tiny. Weeeeeeeeeenie, in fact.

Seeing as Bristol City were not in the top division at the time the game was fairly devoid of quality until one of the big lulking centre-halves looked up, saw Junior starting a lightning break down the right - little legs pumping for all their worth - and launched it forward.

'Launched' is the correct term. This ball went up more than along. It went up so far that the roof of the stand obscured our view. It went up so far that no-one in the ground could see it anymore. This included Junior, who'd clearly been looking where he was running when the ball was kicked. As he ran along (on the other side of the pitch to us) he started frantically looking over both shoulders to try and see where the ball had got to, slowing to a jog and then a walk as he realised it wasn't coming in his direction. Finally he stopped with hands on hips in what is known as the 'double tea-pot' position of slight miffedness.

Then the ball came in to view. Briefly. Like a meteor descended from the heavens, like a thunderbolt thrown by a vengeful weather god, like a sodding great lump of leather travelling at subsonic speeds, the ball dropped from the sky in a flash.

Onto Junior's head.

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!!!!

We all heard the blow. We all heard the collective gasp as Junior crumpled to the ground. We all heard the sound of 15,000 people absolutely howling with laughter, home and away fans alike. I've never again been in a situation where strangers were hugging each other with tears of joy streaming down their faces. The laughter died a little as we realised he was unconscious and had to be revived with smelling salts, but when he staggered upright, took two steps and fell over again, the volume picked up again.

The game was forgotten. I couldn't even tell you who won. But I'll never forget the sight of Junior Agogo's face when the ball hit him. And I'll still giggle every single time....

Lessons in life, part 12

Apparently, even when you're trying your best to lower the severity of your usual profanity filled prattle, blurting out 'GODDAMN IT!' when on the phone to a nun is considered either 'unprofessional' or 'hilarious' depending on whom you're speaking to.....

[RANT]

I needed to vent a bit, and this place seems as good as any. Plus the cat gets upset when I start shouting at the walls. I've been stressed/down/annoyed for the following reasons:

1) There is a member of our team at work who is a contractor (the last one left). After some perceived slight I made about his coding style three months ago he has refused to speak to me (not long after I went permanent). Not long after my colleague equally switched to being a permanent staff member, this contractor refused to speak to him either.

This man is 63.

For a while he would reply to emails requesting that he did work, but for the last few weeks he's refused to deal with anyone but Idiot Boss, misses most meetings, deliberately sits down in the few 'Stand-up' meetings we have and has resorted to replying to direct questions via Idiot Boss, i.e.

Me: "{name removed} could you please check in your design elements?"
Contractor (to Idiot Boss): "Please inform {my name} that I will do that this afternoon."

I'd like to repeat that this man is sixty-fucking-three.

You wouldn't think it as possible for one man to suck the life out of a team of six people but work right now is a depressing, unpleasant, awkward place to be.

2) For the last 8 years of my life (the vast majority of my working life) I've lived the bachelor life. I've had total control over what I did or bought, where I went on holiday, what frivolous things I wasted my money on etc. I don't mean that I was single, more that in a 'career' that changed location every year - that had no permanence at all - I lived in the short-term. I didn't save, I didn't settle into one place or job - I just took the cash and I partied. Lots.

Last summer I took the decision to grow up a little bit. I met Mrs Red Squirrel, I took a permanent job, I started a pension, I started actually saving money. While this is great and what I wanted it has its downside, and that's budgeting. No longer can I just rely on the pay check clearing my debts at the end of the month.

While this sounds trivial it's a major mental adjustment. I'm having to go without things I'd normally not think twice about, remove bits of my life I can no longer afford and limit the amount of socialising I do that involves spending money.

It's a big challenge to change ingrained habits but I was getting there slowly but surely. This point isn't about me saying 'boo-hoo I have to do what just about everyone else does'. No, this point is entirely about me being pissed off that in the circumstances of suddenly feeling the pinch of restrained living, I then find out that my accountants (or, to be truthful, ex-accountants) dropped a bollock on my tax return for the current financial year.

I owe a lot more than I have right now and will have to reduce what I spend considerably further than my current cuts just to meet my tax obligation at the end of the year.

This has not put me in a good mood.

3) The current state of the world economy. My word, it's depressing out there. However in all of it I can't help feel rather annoyed at the base misunderstanding in all the news reports. Yes, banks have lost a lot of money off their balance sheets - but that's not real money. Something is worth what someone will pay for it, but it doesn't become actual money until you sell it. Money hasn't been lost out of the world economy at all - when Bank A lent Amos 'Only Two Teeth' Jones $200,000 to buy a shack in the bayou (despite the closest Amos ever came to a job was being paid to stop sleeping with his sister), that money didn't disappear. Whomever owned the shack got $200,000. On the balance sheet it looks like Bank A 'lost' that money but it still exists in the pocket of Swamp Shacks Inc. The problem with the world economy is that there are lots of people out there with money who simply aren't spending it, and the more the news reports the doom and gloom then the less they spend, and the more people lose their jobs. We're now in a vicious circle fueled by our wonderful 24-hour news culture of making every single piece of news sound like Armageddon.

Which brings me neatly on to....

4) Jade Goody.

I feel sorry that she's dying. Not very sorry admittedly. I feel about as sorry as I feel for the other 100,000 people who die of cancer every year in this country. There is a limit to how much grief you can feel for someone you don't know and whom has no connection to you or anyone you know.

Because that's what Jade Goody is. She's not a celebrity - she's a mentally deficient, racist bigot who didn't even win Big Brother. She didn't even come in the top 3 I think, of not even the first series. That's how much of a non-entity she is.

Yet for some unfathomable reason I cannot avoid her. The fact that she's dying has got more column inches than the Tsunami that killed 200,000 people. The LEAD STORY on the BBC website in the week was that her bottom-feeding scumbucket of a boyfriend (he's currently got a chip attached to his ankle and a curfew for assaulting someone with a golf club) is being let off his curfew so they can get married. He was given special dispensation by the fucking Minister of Justice personally!

The Prime Minister has even been commenting on how tragic it is that she's going to die soon.

In all this the woman herself, as much as I dislike what I've seen of her, has been entirely honest. She's netting £1.5m for the photo deal for her wedding, on top of whatever she gets for filming herself slowly dying, and she's said she's doing it all so that her family and children have a good life once she's gone.

I can't be angry at her personally, it's the media and the current culture of this country that is pissing me off. Fair enough that the tabloids would all have her has front-page stories - they would barely exist without Reality TV after all - but when serious broadsheets start having her as front-page news, when the BBC website has a new story about her on its main page every single day, when the TV news *leads* with the fact that she's got married.......garrrgh! It makes my blood boil.

Jade Goody is dying. I can't bring myself to care anymore.

[/RANT]



And as a counterpoint to all the above because I tend to get carried away during a rant:

1) Contractor person is leaving in a week or so so hopefully he'll take the poisoned atmosphere with him.
2) I have a job and I should be grateful for it.
3) I'm equally not buying certain things because of the media-fuelled panic so I'm just as guilty as everyone else.
4) It won't be long before it's over and thick people can go back to worshipping her alongside Princess 'Bury Me in a Y-shaped Coffin' Diana and hopefully I never have to hear her name again.

Um, sorry....

I know I promised but I've been rather busy and stressed the last few days and I haven't given you all the suitable mockage material I alluded to.

I feel bad.

Only I don't, I don't really have enough energy to care. Please don't take it personally.

So, sorry, but I hope to be back to normal later in the week.

Sometimes life is good.

I know I sometimes bitch about work, but there are (genuine) times when my job isn't merely a means to an end.

If 'not being poor' counts as an 'end' per se.

I work for an academic publishers that takes submissions from all and sundry, rejects the silly ones and publishes the serious ones in a series of eminent scientific journals. As we accept online submissions from anyone we get to interact with all types of people, from the slightly mad to the bonkers insane.

The insane ones are more fun. So long as they never find out where you live.

We've had papers submitted with the frankly genius title of 'K - the Theory Of Everything' (even more brilliantly it was a mere 5 pages of Babelfish translated Greek). We've had a brief manuscript detailing the discovery of 'Chronons' which are subatomic particles that emit time 'like uranium emits radiation' and are not distributed evenly (which explains why time moves faster at some times rather than others). Sadly the proof section was slightly lacking because Chronons 'are impossible to detect.'

I'm convinced, dunno about you.

This week however, saw a new favourite in crank submissions - the exciting discovery of the Inverse Zero (or, as the author prefers to call it, the 'Baby Israel'). It was submitted from a clinic in a US state beginning with W - although it was uncertain as to whether it was submitted by a doctor or an inmate. I'd be happier thinking it was from Vernon, who spends most of his day sitting in the corner rocking back and forth and mumbling about the Amish.

Any scientific paper that starts with:

'Please have patience for I promise you that I will not go away because I have resolved the unified theory of the universe'

is off to a flyer. Implied threat of stalkage? Check. Outlandish claim? Check. Nutter credentials? Nope. No, wait, there's more:

'Walk slowly through my letter, it is in four dimensions and I have discovered the inverse dimension'

Nutter credentials? Check.

So, explain further Vernon:

'In fact God made the inverse. The inverse of a sphere is a 19 degree cone with ex-verse lips'

God eh? Uh-huh. And ex-verse lips? Is that what happens when a botox injection goes wrong? But sorry Vernon, I'm interrupting:

'Genesis of baby Israel, inverse zero, zero of mass energy . There is a reason in the name, Israel was a Amish baby I dealt with'

Ah, the Amish. Always with the Amish. Pray continue:

'I sincerely hope that I am not spilling my “mental semen” in a hole in the ground to produce a convoluted monster of single zero mathematics.'

Well quite. I'd personally rather you kept your semen, mental or otherwise, to yourself Vernon. You know what the nurse said.

'I will send you a four dimensional conal progression bonds. By E mail.'

You know, that sounds great. My email is sort of a bit broken at the moment though Vernon, but I'm sure it'll be up and running and ready to receive a four dimensional email in, oooh, roughly 2026.

Sadly it ends there, but I'll bring you a further installment of Vernon's theories when he next submits his mental semen.

Dear Snow,

Bored now.

Feet wet.

Fuck off please.

Ta.

Red Squirrel

Step away from the internet, ma'am...

I've not complained about work for a while. Mainly because if I did I'd have a RSI from all the typing inside of a week.

The secret saboteur in our team that's trying to get us all sacked? Not worth the typing effort.

The lazy arse contractor who does no work and doesn't try to hide it? I fail to see the point in getting worked up.

The boss that 'works from home' on the off-chance it might rain? I'm rising above it.


I have, however, mentioned the evil witch of a client before. She's still being an evil witch but I'm on unofficial strike after she did something retarded and then blamed me, so thankfully someone else on the team has drawn the short straw this month.

She really is the most insufferable person I've ever met. The fact that she's American is irrelevant - she has a corrosive personality that transcends mere culture. She's also, if I'm honest, not very bright.

She'd raised a request at the end of last year to change a part of the system that we've written for her. This was done, tested and rolled-out several weeks ago.

Last week she tried to use the system as she's been trained to do - for the last year - but got confused and did it very, very wrongly instead. Rather than admit a mistake, she raised an issue with the helpdesk that was (in its entirety):

"YOU SAID YOU'D DONE x. YOU HAVEN'T. YOU LIED!!!!!!"

My colleague, after briefly confirming that the problem was caused by a user with less IQ points than keys to press, decided to reply in kind late last night. He called over to me from his desk:

"Is 'I find it highly offensive to be called a liar by someone too stupid to use the internet' a bit harsh?"

"Er," I replied, "probably. How about 'I do not take kindly to having my integrity questioned when I have done nothing wrong'? I've dealt with her a lot and she'll take what you said badly."

"Good point. I'll go with what you came up with," he said, while typing away.



Imagine my surprise, therefore, on entering the office this morning to read that his reply was:

"I do not take kindly to having my integrity questioned when the problem was your fault. You daft cow."

Thank heavens he took my advice......




Anyway, talking of evil witches, here's a picture of today's snowman that I call:

Aaaarrrrgggghhhh!!! I'm melting! Meeeeeelllllllllllltttttiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiinnnnnnnnnnnnnnngggggg.......

Mystery solved!

It turns out that the Bristol Bus story mentioned in my previous post was this:- A bus, that was made in Bristol about 30 years ago, was shipped to Dubai for the filming of an episode of Doctor Who and had a container dropped on it at the docks.

Stirring stuff, I'm sure you'll agree, and definitely a story of such importance that it is the main headline for a city of 500,000 people. My attention is not at all brought back to the fact that Mrs Red Squirrel's unpleasant incident didn't even make the local news in her NY borough.

Compare and contrast *rolls eyes*


Anyway, it snowed today. SNOW! Snooooooooooooooooooooooooowwwww! Snowsnowsnowsnowsnow! It doesn't snow here very often (as you can probably tell). Once every other year it'll snow enough to settle on the ground, and once every five years or so it'll settle overnight - so to have an entire centimetre of snow on the ground right now has reduced most of the city's residents to gibbering simpletons trying to build snowmen and throw a handful of slush at passing walkers.

My snowman rocked.

The reason it doesn't snow very much is because of the gulf stream. Water, freezing in the arctic becomes more salty (and therefore heavier) and sinks to the bottom of the ocean. This motion pulls warm water from the tropics (or specifically the Caribbean) and the resulting current of warm water heading north is called the gulf stream. I have helpfully illustrated this for you below, with the UK represented as a tramp with a begging bowl, the USA as a greedy Omnomnom sucking up the world's resources, the Arctic as a drowned polar bear and Jamaica as a palm tree smoking a spliff*




This is all well and good because as you can see from my highly detailed diagram, the UK should be as cold as the Labrador Coast (which presumably is where the dogs come from). Thanks to the gulf stream however, it's barely cold enough to snow down in the 'knee' bit where Bristol resides.

Unfortunately, as the Arctic ice melts due to global warming then the water doesn't get saltier anymore, and sinks slower or not at all - shutting off the warm water flowing north**

So consider your poor cousins across the Atlantic when the price of gas reaches three cents a cubic metre and you can't leave your Humvee running all night to make it quicker for your 200 yard drive to work the next morning. Consider poor us - because the only two places on the planet due to get colder thanks to global warming are the UK and Norway. Runaway soaring global temperatures and it actually gets *colder*. How unlucky can you get?

On the plus side, at least we'd come second in the Winter Olympics.....

*National stereotypes - lazy *and* fun!
**You may have seen the Atlantic Conveyor stop in a film called 'The Day After Tomorrow.' So, yeah, like that but over years and years and without the cold-enough-to-freeze-you-in-seconds weather. And without the tidal waves. And without the gross over-simplification of the plot. And without the stupid Hollywood sentimentality. Seriously - worse film since Armageddon. Don't *ever* get me started on Arma-twatfest-geddon....