Bored! I am bored. I can't think of anything else to do. Nothing for it but to go to bed. With all that Red Bull I should be flying right about now, but.. no effect. Like the mighty buffalo, I am impervious to caffeine. And also, like the mighty buffalo, I am a sleepy boy. So off to sleep I shall go, and perhaps if I am lucky I could continue that nice dream I had last night.
Night night. :)
Well, it is past midnight. All my friends are (apparently) in bed.. and yet, I cannot help but feel that the day is not yet over. There is much to do! Much tidying to be done. I could be useful, productive, in these small hours.
To assist, I have just enjoyed a delicious tin of 'Red Bull', an energy drink which is apparently known for its beneficial effects during "periods of increased mental and physical exertion". It also contains 80mg of caffeine.
I am reasonably confident that caffeine does not work on me. Previous times when my co-workers have implored me not to enjoy that second Starbucks Frappucino, because the high coffee content will have me bouncing off the walls, proved that I am impervious to stimulants of any kind. So it will be this evening too, I am sure.
Now I'm off to tidy my envelopes. I will report back if I notice this drink having any effects whatsoever.
The picture you see, screen right, is the new look of the left-hand wall. (Members of the Tidy Club will be able to compare this with previous pictures taken from roughly the same angle.) At first glance, not much different, you may think - but no! Witness the new arrival of the off-green filing cabinet in the middle. This heavy piece of metal, resplendent with Pingu fridge magnet, joins the left hand wall for the first time this evening, after I painstakingly humped it across the room from the other side, where it had been for the best part of ten years.
I'm informed that use of the word "humped" occasionally causes confusion, and while there is nothing improper about the love between a man and his filing cabinet, I should clarify that I'm just referring to the process of pushing and shoving it across the room. I probably should have emptied it first but that would have taken far longer.
Why the hoohah about moving a filing cabinet a few feet across the room? Well, because now on the other side of the room, there is brand new space where a filing cabinet used to be! I think I might put a chair there. The space is also nicely positioned near the window, which means that I might even get an attack of the "Home Beautiful"s and put up some new curtains there, to replace the faded 'Garfield' curtains that I have treasured for so long.
I feel alive with the wonder of tidying. I am looking forward to the new tidying opportunities on the right-hand-side of the room that have been opened up by this furnitural rearrangement. Life is good, no?
At this time of year, it is through music that the emotions of the season are often best expressed. So here's a nice tune from a group called N*Sync, who almost nobody has heard of outside America. I guess that makes them 'indie'. Apart from the over-staged conceit at the start, this may be my favourite Christmas tune ever. Do forgive the video, though - after all, it was 1998 at the time...
So I tried a different online test to see if I liked the results any better, and this just seems to be suggesting that I'm crazy. Hmph.
73 | |
21 | |
59 | |
49 | |
56 |
| You do not experience strong, irresistible cravings and consequently do not find yourself tempted to overindulge, however you experience panic, confusion, and helplessness when under pressure or stress. People generally perceive you as distant and reserved, and you do not usually reach out to others. You tend not to express your emotions openly and are sometimes not even aware of your own feelings. You naturally assume that most people are fair, honest, and have good intentions, however you feel superior to those around you and sometimes tend to be seen as arrogant by other people. You believe that you have the intelligence, common sense, drive, and self-control necessary for achieving success. |
| Test Yourself Compare Yourself View Full Report |
So I took one of those stupid online tests to see what kind of person I am....
| Greed: | High | |
| Gluttony: | Medium | |
| Wrath: | Medium | |
| Sloth: | High | |
| Envy: | Very Low | |
| Lust: | Low | |
| Pride: | High |
Looking out of my window, I notice that my surroundings are still.. well, surrounded... by much ground frost. It arrived last night, and it has not gone away today.
Needless to say, it presses all the correct buttons. Outside is cold and frosty and getting dark. Indoors it is well-lit and warm. And I am indoors. And still on holiday.
Christmas is here. Merry Christmas to all.
A busy day around the house today, as the nice people from Tesco delivered large quantities of seasonal food and drink and such, necessary to tide me over the whole two day Christmas period where the shops might be closed for a few minutes.
Having taken delivery of all that is needed to eat, drink and be merry, it was also time for the King Of Postage to resume his duties and ensure the delivery of the many bits and pieces that the world's eBayers had furiously bid on just recently. I sold something like 25 items at the weekend, and today was the day to take the largest and most heaviest items to the Post Office for them to be posted - by first class mail of course (The King is aware of Last Posting Dates) - to ensure delivery by Christmas.
Needless to say, even bearing his sack of pre-stamped mail, the King had to take his place in the queue behind many people who were stupid and ordinary, trying to post their strangely shaped items by just putting them in the largest jiffy bag that is purchasable. For the avoidance of doubt, the King wishes to make clear that enormous jiffies are NOT the way to safely post large or irregular objects, and he disapproves of such potential postage disasters.
If you are posting things which are strangely shaped (as indeed the King was doing himself this afternoon) then you must properly packetise the item. Or, to be blunt, put it in a box! Only a box will give your item enough protection not to arrive at the other end looking as if a hoarde of elephants have sat on it. (The Royal Mail have a special department for that, with many elephants sitting down on parcels as they pass through the machines. It's in Bristol.)
"But I can't just put it in a box, it will roll around and go lopsided and such" you might say, and the King of Postage would respect such a display of intelligence with the disclosure of further packaging secrets. Once you have your irregular item in a box, you need to make sure that it is properly insulated, cushioned from attack from any of the six sides which your box is statistically very likely to have. Bubble wrap is always nice to have and is freely available in common stores. But for extra deluxeness, the King of Postage recommends the new wave of "plastic air cushions", these being super elite pillows containing nothing but air. These may be placed around, underneath, and on top of your item, keeping it safe and secure, without adding crucial weight to your package that might otherwise cause the requirement to buy extra stamps.
When your package is properly wrapped, ensure to use appropriate taping techniques to keep your box nicely sealed and looking fantastic during its progress through the postal system and eventually to the doorstep of the recipient. Who wouldn't be delighted to receive a perfectly-wrapped package in time for Christmas?
So, in summary, you can never be the King of Postage, but you can get close by always having a good supply of the following:
- Parcel Tape (bonus points for the good thick stuff)
- Common bubble wrap
- Plastic mailing bags
- Nice cardboard boxes
- Air Cushions
- Sellotape (the WIDE stuff, not the thin rolls)
And always remember, Jiffy Bags are only to be used for posting CDs, DVDs, and small books. If it isn't flat, square, or rectangular, use a box.
The King of Postage has spoken. And wishes you all a Merry Christmas.
This just arrived in my junk mail folder. I swear I'm not making this up.
"Change your little sausage to a huge one! With these medicaments, it will grow so big, that even Donald Trump will want to own it."
I guess he needs something to do now he can't build that golf course...
I was in a chat room earlier. Yes, really. And while I was there, thousands of people all jumped on me, asking, nay, demanding more sumptuous blog updates. Needless to say, it was just lovely to realise that millions of people are reading. But what to write about? What to do?
I suggested that I could post the contents of my spam email folder. Deafening applause was given to this ground-breaking piece of internet performance art (I shall call it an "installation", so people know that it is proper culture.)
Damien Hurst here I come. Or Tracey Ermine, perhaps. Move my bed into the Tate, why not? But first, the art:
"Don't let your -dick- look like a kid from the Philippines. Try this efficient medicine."
That's really awfully coarse and troubling, don't you think? Sadly it doesn't get any better.
"Promote your little soldier of love in a new year! Wishing your life was better? Fortune smiles only on real men! Grow to be a self-confident fellow with a huge pen!s in year 2008!"
Word of my fame is clearly spreading. Here's another one:
"Special holiday offers for pen!s enlargement remedy! Do you think you're being treated improperly? Fortune smiles only on real men! Become a happy guy with a big pen!s in year 2008!"
A big car? A nice fat payrise?
"Experience unforgettable pleasure with your new improved dick! Order now, and you won't regret it!"
Unhappy with your body part? Why not replace it with a new one. Only at Halfords! Actually I'm pretty sure Halfords wouldn't be involved in such a scheme. Replacing body parts is really only the kind of thing you'd expect to see in an actual proper hospital. Probably not an NHS one either.
"Hot Older Ladies!"
At least they're not talking about my trumpet any more. Maybe it's getting better!
"Do you always blame your hard luck? Only real men have all the luck! Change to a fortunate fellow with a huge phallus in year 2008"
Oh, this isn't getting any better at all (although I enjoy the symmetry of "fortunate fellow") - what is causing all this email?
"Do not be shame for reason of of your male aggregate size. Your chick does not want to be with you by reason of your organ size. Don't miss this good possibility to solve the trouble. All you have to do is just put to use our device enlargement. Your life will change sure enough."
That one appears to be offering to service my Bontempi. And who wouldn't be delighted by a change of subject? I certainly would. Whoever is telling these people about the size of my johnson is a total fibber.
I'm technically on holiday. For tomorrow, and the next week, and the next week, and the next week! I don't have to work again until January 7th.
Apart from a brief period of "thinking it was Friday" earlier, I'm not too sure if the enormity of the situation has hit me. Of course there's still a work Christmas do next week, which I shall attend with all the largesse and good grace of someone who is truly on holiday and being there of his own free will.. but in any case.. I don't feel entirely holidayfied yet.
Perhaps later. I will be sure to note it down here when it happens.
I'm in a strange kind of netherworld at the moment. In fact, I'm not even completely sure what day it is. For indeed, you see, despite the fact that I have this niggly feeling that I'm really not being as useful and productive as I should be (home-tidying-wise,) I also find that I have brief, intense periods of entirely exhausting activity.
Yesterday I scanned some more old phone bills, shredding the originals thereafter so as to keep this classified intelligence out of the hands of enemy agents. I really ran up some record-breaking phone bills, back in the day. Who can forget August 1992 when a demand for £678 landed on the doormat? And it seems that I hadn't learned my lesson even by November 1995 when the BT bill weighed in at £762. I don't think I've ever topped that, mostly because phone calls today are cheaper than they've ever been - and who needs to spend hundreds of pounds dialling up the internet when modern living brings us a lovely broadband connection for a price that looks like a bit of a bargain in comparison.
I'm pleased to have these phone bills stored on my computer now. They're good memories, reminders of a time when things were different and apparently nothing mattered, least of all an £800 phone bill. What else explains such insane largesse?
This afternoon was also busy and useful, as the upcoming Christmas season reminded me that I really must get around to putting some more junk on eBay. Junk sells better when the season is pointing a gun to people's heads and making them buy presents OR ELSE. And isn't that depressing? Well, not always. My unique kind of junk is bound to make the perfect present on Christmas morning. Who wouldn't be delighted by a Max Headroom colouring book? Apparently this is now called "Retro", and thus is "in". As if it was ever 'out'.
Something like four or five hours passed this afternoon while I busily took photographs of things (or just slammed them in the scanner), carefully weighed them (to work out how much they'd cost to post), and wrote masterful descriptions so as to describe them to a buying public. ("This is a box of buttons. Some of the buttons are blue. Others are large. The proportion of the buttons which are both large AND blue is shown on the attached venn diagram. Buyer to pay £1 postage.")
So, as I speak, no less than 75 assorted items from my archives are now being gazed upon with curious eyes by a worldwide audience of eBayers. Only 6 days 22 hours and 29 minutes to go. Hurry hurry. Who will buy my sweet red roses?
Oh my GOD! They're CATS.. and they're TALKING TO EACH OTHER!!!
Who knows what intelligence these creatures are sharing in this fashion? What great thoughts are they thinking, sharing, correlating with other members of their kittycat network? What plans could they be making to finally subjugate the human race to their indeterminate whims, allowing unrestricted use of any and all rooms in the house, the immediate opening of all locked doors, and a free right of access to all laundry baskets for the purposes of chillin' or sleepin' ?
Needless to say, I gave this quite some amount of thought. But then someone else was able to translate, and the world is at peace again:
So that's all right then.
"The Bank of England has cut interest rates to 5.5% from 5.75% amid signs that..."
WHAT?! They can't do that! Well, I guess they can, but they mustn't! They shouldn't! What is going to happen to my savings? Soon my pennies of savings will be earning even less pennies of interest. How am I to retire before I'm 40 at this rate?
Needless to say, those no-good heels and bums at the Nationwide and the Halifax announced that they would be cutting their savings rates immediately. Which is awfully nice of them. After all, when interest rates go up they usually think about it for a few months before passing on the increase.
This will never do. Although I see it made the FTSE go up, so maybe it's not all bad. No, who am I kidding, what an annoyance it all is. Bah! Humbug.
There's a news story today about someone who'd been missing for five years, and this weekend walked into a police station. Missing, presumed dead, his return has obviously come as a great relief to everyone.
A similar thing happened to me this afternoon. Because a long time ago, I used to work for the Government. Not the political parties, of course - not the Conservatives (who were in power for most of my time), nor even the Labour party (who swept to power just as I was leaving). No, I worked for the people who really run the country - the Civil Service.
But, ten years ago, I resigned. And shortly after, I moved. Hence, I became officially missing. A bit like Patrick McGoohan in The Prisoner, only without the kit cars or the village or the kidnapping.
Today, I returned. I'm quite sure that far-off computers illuminated lights on a display screen somewhere, that telexes were sent and emails appeared on the Blackberries of Whitehall mandarins in offices both at home and abroad. Ant is back, just like Jack Bauer, only without the good looks and the ruggedness and all that unnecessary showing-off.
The reason for all this is that while tidying up this afternoon, I found some documents from my illustrious career in public service. And I remembered how I'd failed to tell them my new address when I moved, and how I'd failed to fill out their form asking me if I'd got married, as they needed to know all that stuff for my pension.
A pension! I forgot I had one of those.
I made the call.
Needless to say, the number had changed, but a little detective work revealed where duties had been transferred to.
I made the call.
"Civil Service Pensions", said the reassuringly smooth lady voice on the end of the phone. It was like being home again.
I said hello, explained my absence, gave my super-secret-squirrel codeword (which mere mortals might confuse with an ordinary National Insurance number, but we know better.) Within moments, my details were filling the screen of the distant operative.
"Mr -redacted- ?", she said. I confirmed my identity.
"It's good to have you back, Sir." I think she said that, at least, but I was momentarily distracted. We chatted amiably for a few moments, and I indicated that I was about to transmit my co-ordinates to her. Grateful for the update, she indicated that new goodies and access codes would be posted to me shortly. (And we know how good Government post is.)
I commented that it had been a while, and I should not have left them wondering where I was for so long. Her voice was reassuring. "People often forget about us for a while, but then as they get older they get in touch to put their affairs in order."
Affairs?! ... Oh, right, the pension. Of course. We chatted some more, at which point they said they'd post me a "valuation" as well. I'm sure that this will be a considerable sum for my many years of modestly-paid work.
It's very good to be back. Now that they know where I am, I'm sure that my country will be in touch if they need me to handle any more urgent filing and photocopying for them.
Oh baby,
you make my heart go crazy,
you are so mayonnaisey
Askew, they do, go all my words and phrasey,
I am in some new-found daze-y,
for you are so mayonnaisey
The other girls, they may be hollandaisey
sometimes even bolognesey,
but not like my mayonnaisey
That movie, not by M Scorsese,
But by the Mr Patrick Swayze,
For dirty dancing I am just too lazy,
so in closing, it is time to says-me,
that you are the sweetest daisy
and of course, so very mayonnaisey.
5.15am. A strange dream. I found myself (in a train station, again) talking to someone I didn't know. Either they or I needed to go off to do something, but would come back. Worried that we might get separated, and also not knowing who this other person was, I thought I would offer them my business card. (After all, this might cause them to reciprocate and hand over their own card which would yield details of their identity.)
So I reached into my pocket full of business cards.. and every one I pulled out wasn't mine. Or it was mine but had been written all over (which is something I do).. but mostly, the cards weren't mine.
Of course, dreams are stupid and don't mean anything. Still interesting, though.
I am inspired! I'm not sure if this is your average mid-life crisis, or whether I am reaching a great turning point in my life, but just recently, something has occured to me.
1) Nobody is going to give me my dream job. I'm going to have to make it for myself.
Inspired by the whole idea of (1), this evening I have listened to the audiobook version of "Anyone Can Do It", by noted Scottish Dragon, Mr Duncan Ballantyne. Having heard his inspirational tales of how he made millions by selling ice cream and building care homes, I have now progressed to a second realisation!
2) Working for a living is altogether far too much hassle.
From this, 1+2 leads on to the inevitability of my final conclusion:
3) I want to retire. Right now.
At last I have a life plan! "What do you want from your life?" is a question asked by all good self-help books. And several bad ones too. Up until now, I was not entirely sure. Now I am. I want to retire! So at least I now have a plan. How to get there is another matter entirely.
P.S. Also bought some more premium bonds.
I've got nine whole days to myself before I'm "back at work". OK, I'm probably going to be checking my email every so often during that time, but the point is I still have a week off work (plus two weekends at either side) - and I can't help but think that I should use the time well.
I'm not sure how my tidying project measures up, I seem to have come to a bit of a standstill on that at the moment. I'm trying to gee myself up to throw out a few hundred videotapes that are really perfectly OK but aren't any use to me (or, seemingly, anyone else). That'll make a small amount of space which I can tidy other things into. Plus I've got two storage boxes full of things that I really need to take photos of and put on eBay.
I'd really quite like to find ten million pounds from somewhere. Not just because having ten million pounds is probably quite nice, but I want to make great art, and stuff, and that kind of thing tends to be quite expensive. Ten million is probably what I'd need. In any case, while I'm sure that I still have plenty of bits and pieces that I could sell on eBay, I'm not sure that it's quite THAT valuable. But every little helps, I'm sure.
Nine days. I have been somewhat inactive these past few weeks. I really should do something. How to get in the mood... I wonder. It would be a shame not to spend the time productively...
I wasn't at work today. I am having a four-day weekend, the first of many leave days which I will be taking off this month and next month.
Today I did no work at all. Well, not much, anyway. A little. I kind of made the mistake of reading my email first thing in the morning, with the best of intentions, just to let my colleagues know what to be getting on with while I was out. Unfortunately while doing so I caught sight of someone in another department trying to cause a huge stink about what a crisis it would be if I was out of the office and could not do anything that they might need me to do.
So I kind of felt the need to respond to that, with some robustness. And then another one. And then another one as someone else from another department (but managed by the same person who looks after the first troublemaker's department) also got in on the act, having heard that I was on holiday and therefore taking their chance to cause a stink as well. How on earth can the business survive if Ant is not here to do these crucial things? (They ignore that even on holiday I'm always contactable and can sort stuff out quite easily.) Apparently it only strengthens their case (already stated in the past) that they need a "more reliable" solution "which does not rely on Ant". So I had to respond fairly robustly to that one, too.
I only really check my email when I'm out of the office just to make sure that no fires have broken out - so I don't really appreciate witnessing such obvious attempts at arson. It's not paranoia when everyone really is out to get you. :-)
The head of both troublemaker's departments is very disappointed that I cannot attend a face-to-face meeting next Thursday, which apparently is so important that they cannot take advantage of my considerable availability to do it via a conference call. Again I have had to be forceful. I am - or am intending to be - on holiday next Thursday as well, and I do not wish to have it portrayed as some kind of selfish act that I am taking an entitlement of my employment at a time which is otherwise the most convenient for the company as a whole.
Great people I seem to work with these days.
But all that aside, I did almost no work and instead did much relaxing, watching a few DVDs (including Die Hard 4.0, which is reasonably watchable) and not much else. And on Monday I shall try even harder still not to check my email at all.
I realise today that I still have lots of holiday which I have not taken. If I don't take it before the end of the year, I lose it all - and this year, I'm determined to take it all. It'll be the first of (thinks.. nine.. ten.. eleven...) twelve years where I've taken all my leave - not bad considering that for the first nine years or so, I didn't take any at all.
So it looks like I'm going to have quite a lot of spare time during November and almost all of December. This might be what getting fired feels like, except with email.
So, the plan. There is no time to lose. I must immediately take leave next Friday, and also the Monday following, to return on the Tuesday, working a blissful four day week until I take one whole entire week off - yes, that's five whole days, ladies and gentlemen - before returning for another four days, and off again on the Friday.
December kicks off with an all-day lie-in on Monday, then a three day week before a four day weekend. Three more days at work, then I'm taking the Friday, and the next week, and the next week, and the next week! By the time I'm back, it'll be the new year.
What on earth am I going to do with myself? Of course I guess I could just not take all those days off and work just for the sheer gosh-darned pleasure of it all. Ha ha. Maybe once. But not this year.
Expect hourly blogging over the Christmas period if I get too bored!
This evening I was sampling a delicious Capri-Sun beverage, as pictured here. Bursting with natural oranges, and such, and sporting some kind of funky sports top ideal for the busy olympic athlete such as I.
It was indeed very orangey, and the ideal accompaniment to my evening sandwich. But while engaging in this smörgåsbord of fine dining, I noticed that the packaging seemed to have an interesting effect of crumpling up as I drank. Perhaps the space-age doobry on the end was some kind of one-way valve, allowing easy refreshment to pour out, but no air to return into the package - ideal for the busy spaceman such as I.
I experimented, as any good scientist would do, blowing air into, and sucking air out of, the package. It seemed to retain its shape no matter what I did. Curious. There's obviously some kind of funky action going on here, I thought, and as a result I came to the conclusion that this must be some kind of spill-proof top or something.
Testing the thesis, I cupped my right hand (to catch any small droplets of juice which may leak if the experiment fails) while tipping the alien technology packaging with my left. It's not long before I discover two things. One - there is nothing space-age about this packaging at all and if you tip the juice, it comes out. Two - a cupped hand is no place to store orange juice, even when poured gently, let alone gushing out of its low-tech packaging, as it is currently doing. Where are NASA's rocket scientists now, eh?
Result - orange juice everywhere. T-shirt soaked. Trousers soaked. Underwear soaked. Juice on chair. Juice on floor.
Forget the sharp objects, I clearly shouldn't be allowed near anything. Complicated foods like crackers and cheese are one thing, but if I can't even handle orange juice, I'd better give up any thoughts of being allowed near any kind of food ever again.
It's not for me to examine my own navel, but upon discovering that this would be my 100th blog posting, it put me in a mood to somehow celebrate the occasion. And what better way by looking back on my so-far illustrious career in blog-type-entertainment?
It was on September 10th 2006 that things started, with me noticing as I do that my blog had been viewed 8 times before I had even written a single word. Clearly a good sign, and more than a year on, I can report that AOL's blog counter is no more reliable now than it was then. It has reset itself back to '0' at least twice this year already, thus leaving me unable to measure the audience in any meaningful fashion. Ho hum.
It was not long before I was paying attention to how gorgeous I am, albeit strictly in a virtual kind of sense, before moving to the always good-value subject of Lies My Parents Told Me (Volume One), which reminds me that don't think I ever did get around to Volume Two and the delightful story of the tomato. Then again, I might have done so and just forgotten it - I have lots of things to think about after all and sometimes there is not enough room between my ears.
Attempting some 'lifestyle blogging' about infeasible smoothies was very Daily Mail and entirely a disaster that I didn't see fit to repeat. Then the first in a long range of mental musings set more of a pattern for what was to come. All this and I'd only been blogging for a week, too.
That seemed to jinx things and the next week went entirely unblogged apart from the recycling of The Ridiculous Frog Song and, the very same day, my hilarious take on how 3-2-1 worked which I will still admit to being rather pleased with. Trouble was soon to follow as I wondered how to feed myself when Tesco's website was down or how I would ever play the piano again as a unidexter.
Not bad for a first month's work, soon followed by many other entries not entirely worthy of mention, although the hilarious battery story is always a crowd-pleaser, and might explain why I was still single. Luscious Ladies clearly overlooked the fact that I invented blogging but then again back then my bedroom was such a tip that I couldn't have invited them upstairs for coffee even if I'd wanted to. I was lucky to see anyone at all, even a greasy Talk Talk salesman who I really should have gone all John-Smeaton on. But hindsight is always 20/20.
My grand plans to mess with people's clocks came to nought, but at least there were reasons to be cheerful - of course, talking about how delighted I was by my gas boiler was bound to cause me trouble later. But at least I knew how to fix things like a nerd, which is always an attractive quality. Things were no tidier in November, but that would change later too. Next month I got a dirty email from Amazon, which was always going to be prime blogging territory, and wrote the first of two entries about dreaming, and the start of the incredibly long-running and crowd-pleasing King Of Postage series.
By the new year I was feeling literary, in between trying to tidy up and thinking about Speak & Spell and reading more dirty email. Tidying progress was slow, as this horrifying picture shows, which required the launching of The War On Elastic Bands and its sister conflict, The War On Lightbulbs and non-stop boring updates on Project Tidy. Life indoors is still warm but expensive as I settled in to the realisation that I'd probably be tidying up all year before I got anywhere. Not until much later would I have floor space upon which to dance and swing cats. Even then it did not prevent the blizzard of boring articles about cardboard boxes from coming. :-)
In the midst of all the excitement, I never did find out why Yul Brynner was unavaialble.
I notice that I'm still having persistent recurring dreams about being at school. This is kind of strange - clearly the highly symbolic and Freudian act of shredding my old school books (inexplicably hoarded for 19 years) has had no effect. So why do these dreams recur?
There's usually some variation in the circumstances surrounding it, but the basic dream generally involves me not being at school. Somehow I'm late, or don't want to go, or haven't been for a while. Either way, I'm absent in a way that I probably shouldn't be.
The other night's dream revolved around these usual themes, although I recall that this time I was about a week away from leaving school for good - but nonetheless I didn't really feel like going. Seeking to back up my decision, I thought about which subjects would be on the timetable if I were to attend today - and of course I couldn't remember what lessons were at what times, or even which room they are in. Which is not surprising, because I left school nearly twenty years ago. Even so, the awkward feeling of not remembering the timetable is also a recurring element of the school-based dreams, even in the ones where I'm actually at school and not bunking off.
I wonder why these themes haunt me. I have similar recurring dreams about trains. Now maybe this makes a bit more sense because on the rare occasion that I do happen to leave the house, I usually travel around by train. Of course, in the dreams, I'm usually at Waterloo, waiting for a train which doesn't seem to turn up, or is on a platform I can't find, or which doesn't actually move, or something like that. If I do manage to board a train that starts moving, it's usually going to the wrong place. Or I'm just not quite sure where it is.
Hmm. There's a common theme here... Not being where I should be, either because of circumstances or my own lax attitude to regular attendance.
Wait, there's a third recurring dream - walking around trying to find a toilet. Outdoors, indoors, up and down stairs and through doors.. lots of doors. And lifts too. Plus, irony of ironies, when I find a convenient convenience, there is usually something wrong with it. The door doesn't have a lock on it. There are other people watching. All things which conspire to preventing the happy pee time which I seek. Of course that's probably a good thing, because when I wake up, I really really want to go actually and for real. That must be why I can't actually go in the dream, because if I ever did find that perfect secluded locked toilet, I'd be wetting the bed, which at the age of 35 is generally considered impolite at best.
I bet other people don't write things like this in their blogs. I wonder if I've got any more pictures of kittens anywhere.
This evening the cooking of my macho manly dinner was disrupted by a kitchen failure. Namely, the oven door would not close in the way that is normally required for efficient cooking of a man's meat. For the purpose of illustration, the door is seen here, screen right, in the silver colour which mine is not, accompanied by cheese and vegetables and lovely worktops which my kitchen does not contain.
A troubling situation. Dinner had to be aborted, replaced at the last minute with that which could be cooked on the top of the cooker. However, this did not mean that the fight was over, no sir.
As the evening rolled around, and the cooker had cooled down, it was probably under the impression that it was victorious. No sir, for into the kitchen I burst, armed with an armful of screwdrivers, ready for revenge. Within moments the door is open and I am looking for screws. Two on the top, two underneath. It probably thought that the underneath screws, being difficult to access, would be enough to save it, but no. Seconds later the cooker is down, on the floor, on its side, where I can access all of its parts with ease. It's not a fight, it's an execution. And it is not long before the door is off and I am examining the strange mechanism by which it stays shut and/or open.
It's a strange little dealie with springs and rollers and stuff. There wasn't a whole lot I could do with it, but jabbing it a few times with a screwdriver at least seemed to restore proper operation for the moment. I did consider spraying it liberally with WD40, but paused once I noted the word "FLAMMABLE" on the tin. Coming to the conclusion that flammable solvents are perhaps not a good thing to have hanging around the inside of your oven, I chose not to use the lubricant. Purely for the wellbeing of the city's women and children, of course, and not because I am scared. If my cooker bursts into flames then I'll have that thing down on the ground again in the blink of an eye, just like John Smeaton.
It seems that a little prodding has made it work right again - the best kind of repair - so I put it all back together again. I also took the time to examine whether the earth wire should be hanging off like that, and during my investigation I was forced to unscrew the wall socket to assist with my enquiries. Also fine.
There are ten million stories in the naked city. This has been one of them. Now where's my dinner..
I seem to be in a bit of a 'Bee Gees' mood today. After all, Everyone Loves The Bee Gees. I think that might have been the title of one of their albums. If it wasn't, it should have been.
Here's another excellent song which has a certain Bee Gees kind of feel to it. Funny how you can miss stuff at the time and only realise how great something is years later...
So I installed a new ink cartridge. I always keep some handy. This pleased my printer enough to cause printing to begin, but at first the result was all streaky and missing bits. This isn't too unusual when you put in a new cartridge, so I told it to go clean its nozzles, as printers often need to do.
After a double nozzle cleaning, all was well, and hoping to print my thing at long last, I was therefore delighted to see a new message appear on the screen.
"Your EPSON printer reports that an internal component has reached the end of its life."
Basically, on an inkjet printer that must be about five or six years old (how time flies), and is therefore unrepairable, this error message means "buy a new one".
No amount of coaxing, of button pressing, of turning-it-off-then-on-again, would get it to play ball. Once the printer has decided that its life is at an end, it cannot be persuaded to play.
I find this annoying. I rather like to find out that household appliances are at the end of their life by some kind of verifiable and obvious means. Loud grinding sounds, sparks coming out of the sides, springs and cogs flying in all directions. That, to me, says "end of life - buy a new one." But for a printer that was working quite well enough just seconds before to suddenly turn up its heels and DECIDE that it had had quite a good innings but that was quite enough, is just not quite in line with how I expect things to work.
The printer could also not be persuaded to release the precious ink cartridge which I had freshly installed in it not moments earlier. Of course there wouldn't be much that I could do with it (unless I had another identical printer, which of course I don't because they don't make them any more) but it is still the point of the thing.
So, reluctantly, I chucked out a perfectly good, yet somewhat self-euthanised, printer, and bought a new one. Not a new Epson printer, of course, or in fact even a new inkjet printer. No. I have taken the opportunity to "trade up" to something more whizzy.
I remember when laser printers used to be expensive and large - but now they're not. So this afternoon a nice man knocked on my door and delivered a nice new HP Laserjet 1020. No ink, just lasers. And toner. It is small and quiet and good, and now sitting on top of my VCR where Mr Epson once spent his time. Not bad for £50, including free delivery. Who wouldn't be delighted by such a bargain?
Of course I keep wanting to print things now, so as to properly play with my new toy. I must resist. But at least I finally printed out that thing I needed a week ago...
Dear Diary,
Having a lovely time tidying up. It's like a giant jigsaw, coming together a few pieces at a time.
On Saturday I moved three storage boxes away from behind my chair. With those boxes out of the way, on Sunday I was able to get to a much bigger old box with stuff piled on top. And once I'd piled through that, on Monday I was able to move the big pile of (flat) cardboard boxes that I bought earlier in the year (but which ended up being really just rather too big and not any kind of aid to tidiness at all.)
So now I can walk to my window, and look out of the window. This is nice.
Of course there's still more to to. In exchange for all this space, I do have more or less a complete wall formed of nothing but storage boxes - but that's not so bad, and it's several hundred times tidier than it used to be. Plus, the storage box is a handy unit of work for the second wave of ruthlessness which is sure to follow in the future.
I'd quite like to move the filing cabinet by the window over to the other side of the room. So if I clear four boxes, I'll have the space to do that.
I like this a lot. There's even more of a "point" to tidying when I can say "I need to do THIS so that I can do/have THAT". It's useful to have a reason to do things.
I've said it before, I'm still not entirely sure what I'll do with myself once I'm fully "tidy" - but then again, given that I've been wittering on about this since last December, I'm sure that this blog's millions and millions of readers will be delighted to have me finally stop wittering on about cardboard boxes all the time. :-)
Just to prove that I'm not completely stuck in the 80s (or late 70s, for that matter), here's something relatively modern which is also good:
I had no idea that tidying up would end up making me feel so amazingly old. The process of sorting through long-forgotten things seems to be bringing home to me that before you know it, what was only yesterday turns out to have been half a life away.
Perhaps it's the fact that much of the stuff that fills my spaces is that which was once current, and is now forgotten. I find myself in possession of a fair number of cassette tapes. The things that we used to listen to music on - before MP3 players killed off the CDs that killed off the tapes, that is. I haven't been through them too closely yet, but I can make a fair guess that the vast majority of the cassettes I own are filled with nothing more than harsh electronic squeaking noises - no, not the Pet Shop Boys, but data cassettes for the ZX Spectrum which I once spent so much time with.
Even so, part of my grand tidying up is in making old things all modern and digital, so I've been transferring a lot of tapes to my computer. And these last few days, I've been finding more tuneful tapes of music recorded off the radio, as people used to do. Lots of good songs, in fact, including the one above, which came out in 1977, when I was about five, although I discovered it much later on. But then somehow between the music some cheesy radio jingle will break in.. "Your 1989 power station! 103.2 F-M!!"
1989? Was it really that long ago?
And that's when it hit me. I was seventeen years old. That makes these tapes eighteen years old. These tapes, so normal and useful and everyday at the time, are half a life away, and now almost obsolete.
It's not just cassettes. Maybe the most painful part of the tidying is in finally coming to terms with the fact that a whole lot of my "stuff" is also obsolete. Hundreds of VHS tapes. 45rpm singles. 33rpm LPs.. Even floppy discs, once an everyday essential, have now been taken over by time. So I'm also copying all my floppy discs onto something newer. I must have at least 400 of the things. And for those playing along at home, all the files on 400 floppy discs will fit quite comfortable on precisely ONE CD. Or a USB thumb drive that's smaller than my thumbnail.
Progress IS fantastic. CDs are better. Floppy discs take up a ton of space. It's hard to find things on tapes. But the reminder of how the passage of time can so swiftly turn the everyday into the antique, or worse still, the relic, is just scary.
There's no reason why it should be. As I've occasionally said in the past, there's every reason to believe that there is nothing to fear about getting old. Or at least, older. After all, you pick up some nice memories along the way.
"I am hoping you get this... please come back, we miss you."
I haven't been on Second Life for a good long while. I guess I've just not had quite as much time or inclination for it recently.
There are people I know on Second Life - I'm not sure I'd really be as presumptuous to call them "friends" because that's really their decision rather than mine - but in any case I wasn't really expecting my absence to be noticed or for anyone to be particuarly bothered that I was just not around any more.
I'm not quite sure how to take it. I guess on one level it should be nice to be missed - heart-warming somehow to be liked enough that someone realises when I'm not there. Or maybe that too is being rather presumptuous and there is another less ego-flattering reason at play. But on another level.. slightly worrying. Suddenly, more of an obligation, a responsibility.. and even without being there, I might already be making people feel bad.
I do worry about stuff like that. One of those things at the back of my mind which worries me so, the idea that I leave people worse off than I found them.. that somehow as much as I might enjoy people's company, as much as I'd hope to be a fun and decent and useful person to have around... what if I was actually bad for people? What if, overall, without even knowing, I was somehow saying or doing things that actually just upset people? Without even knowing. I'm not sure I could stand that.
It seems I can do it without even being around, and on the occasions when that particular thought has currency, it gives me this terrible urge to run away. Just to disappear, to crawl back into my shell and keep myself to myself and not bother other people any more. Because as much as I do like other people's company, I'm fairly sure that I'd miss them a hundred times more than they'd miss me - if they even noticed at all. As much as it would hurt, sometimes it just seems like the right thing to do, because the idea of upsetting people with something that I did or didn't say, without even realising, is just too painful to bear.
The usual problem is that "friendship", at the risk of being presumptuous again, is that it's just too hard to escape. Inevitably I'll end up saying or doing something which gives people other ways to find me or get in touch, which makes it hard to ever truly disappear, no matter how strong the urge sometimes is. There is no escape, short of moving house - but I guess, no-one's really going to come knocking on my door just because I haven't been on Second Life for a few months. Or at least, I certainly hope not. That would just be too embarrassing.
So as far as Second Life goes, I need to decide - return... or run? Oh, how stupid is this? I wish I was better at this kind of thing. Just not being a complete basket-case would certainly be a good place to start, but I doubt if that's going to happen any time soon.
I have a feeling at the moment that things are starting to come together. My tidiness problem now seems less daunting than before. There's still plenty to do, but the stuff I have is at least better organised, in neat boxes (see above), and a first wave of chucking-out or selling-on-ebay means there's less of it than there was before.
So life is good. Yesterday I resolved to take a second trip through my cupboards and see if more space could be freed up, and today I felt quite pleased with myself at clearing almost a whole shelf's full of space. (That's about two-and-a-half standard storage boxes worth of space, for those following along at home.) It was almost a shame to fill that space, but that in turn freed up some more space in other places, so it all comes good in the end. And I'm looking forward to doing more tidying tomorrow. It's quite addictive once you get into it. I wonder what on earth I'm going to do with myself once the grand tidying-up is all done...
I'm also turning my attention to healthy eating. I had a very nice salad for lunch, with vegetables and chicken and rice and everything. It was good. In fact I might have it every day. I also had extra vegetables with my tea, which was also good. I might even have reached the Government-mandated 5 portions a day. Perhaps I should have some fruit to make sure. I'll do that in a minute.
I feel remarkably content right now. I think it must be the time of year. The weather is cold outside - so cold, in fact, that for the last two mornings my heating has come on, despite the thermostat being cranked down super-low due to the summer. But it seems that summer is over. So while it's cold outside, it's now nice and warm inside, which I find very very pleasing indeed.
Life is, as they say, good. And who wouldn't be delighted by that?
Today is the glorious 27th. Glorious because it is payday. Every month, the 27th is the day when I get paid. Unless the 27th is a Saturday, Sunday, or Bank Holiday, when I get paid on the last Thursday. Or something like that. There's some method to it but I try not to pay too much attention to it.
And it seems that it has been a productive day. When a young boy's thoughts turn to money matters, the frugal impulse kicks in, and I find new ways to ensure that my pennies are properly conserved and stored for the future. So this evening I have been making phone calls a-plenty.
First off, a call to the nice people at the cable company. Long-term readers will know that for some baffling reason I continue to pay them for their lousy service. I made a phone call today to bring that amount down to something slightly less. Not much, it only saves £4.50 a month, but for something I never EVER use, and only seem to hang on to for no good reason at all, it seems like a reasonable saving to be made. And it takes me one step closer to cancelling for good, one day.
Secondly, a phone call to the nice people at Sky. People say bad things about Sky but I got through to them quickly, got straight through to the right department, and told them where they could shove their movie channels. (Which, rather ungraciously, I had been getting cheap for the last three months, although that offer has now expired.) And while disposing of the movie channels, I also got rid of the "News & Events Mix", because there's nothing in it I need, and the only two news channels which matter (Sky News and the other one) are free anyway. No point in paying £21 a month when you can just as easily pay £20 a month. (That's "5 mix" for those playing along at home.)
Earlier in the day, a phone call to BT, from whom I had ordered their whizz-bang "BT Vision" television broadband thingummy. Boxes and stuff were supposed to arrive yesterday, but they did not. A call to BT today reveals that there is "some kind of problem" with my order, which they cannot track down or fix, leaving them with no option but to cancel my order completely. And cancelling this order will take 48 hours. So could I please call back and order again next week?
Sure. Or I could just not bother. Another £14.99 a month saved! Perhaps I'd rather have the money.
Had a quick look around my various online banking accounts and was delighted to discover that the missing £3 (which had gone missing in a previous "lost cheque" shenanigan) was now once again found. Which was nice. This may be the electronic equivalent of finding coins down the back of the sofa.
Registered an internet domain name (a www.something) for possible use in future artistic endeavours.
Bought £100 of premium bonds, in the hope that my number might come up and the resulting millions will pay for those future artistic endeavours.
Looking over my other monthly outgoings, I can't see anything too obvious to get rid of. So that'll do for now. And so it is that, as with every payday, I am briefly a man of means. Hooray! Of course there's a whole month's worth of bills to come yet. :-)
I love iTunes very much. I admit that I didn't really see the point until someone bought me a Shuffle, which necessitated my downloading of the hitherto unexplored beastie, but I soon fell in love with it.
The recent announcements of the new iPods brought about the urge to secure a 'classic' (well, v2) Nano before it was too late. Having got a nice deal on a black 8gb from Amazon, I picked up a red 8gb on eBay at a similarly irresistible price. (Yes I wuv you, Mr Red Nano, yes I do, yes I do..)
But anyway.. Much as I love iTunes, sometimes there are things you can't do with it. It's not easy to move your MP3s from one disc to another, for example. Not without losing the play counts and ratings. Which you get used to after a while, and it would be a shame to lose...
The nice thing is, I found a devilishly excellent (and considerably nerdy) trick which gives me full mastery over my iTunes. No laborious moving files around for me. Rename tracks individually? Ha ha ha. I pity the fool.
Tonight I was getting tired of the tracks in my library from many bad compilation albums. The information usually had the artist titles in the track name - meaning I had thousands of tracks called "Peter Andre / Flava" by the popular artist 'Various'. As opposed to the less popular artist, Peter Andre. But I digress... the upshot of it all is that using my considerable excellence and skillo skill, I managed to rename something like 3,000 tracks in the blink of an eye. Which certainly beats typing out all the track names again.
And therefore, in short, I must admit to feeling rather pleased with myself. Can I be King of iTunes now? Just for a few minutes? :-)
So here's how I spent my Sunday evening. Eating crackers and cheese, as one does, while catching up on some Calvin and Hobbes comics on the computer.
It all went very well. First I dropped the knife - and after a few minutes peering around on the floor, even after turning on the light and looking around with a torch and everything, I was forced to conclude that it had disappeared.
I went downstairs to fetch another knife, and returned to resume my eating. This continued for several more minutes until I then dropped the box of crackers, resulting in crackers flying all over the floor, accompanied by the crumbs that are inevitably created by the act of carelessly smashing a box of fragile crackers against an unyielding hard surface like the floor.
So I picked up the crackers, swept up the crumbs... and made a mental decision never to attempt any tasks requiring such complex hand-eye co-ordination ever again. I think I'll go to bed - let's hope I can at least manage that.
I discovered last night that someone else actually reads this blog. This came as something of a surprise, given that I had previously assumed it had a maximum readership of 1, on a good day. But no! Someone else is reading, watching, analysing my every word and phrase. I am being examined, studied, as scientists may study creatures which swarm and multiply in a drop of water.
I don't know if I'm flattered or horrified! How am I to give pleasure to an audience of many people? Wibbling about cardboard boxes is one thing, but an actual proper audience is harder to please. I may have to buff up my act, bring out the 'A' material, guaranteed to be a crowd-pleaser at all times. If not, booing and rotten tomatoes are bound to issue forth from an unsatisfied audience.
It can only lead to a massive decline in quality as we race headlong towards the lowest common denominator. And who wouldn't be delighted by that? So, for all the good readers everywhere, here's a cute picture of a sleeping cat:
At some point, everyone with a clutter problem turns to some kind of "storage solution". Apparently even a plain old carboard box is not just a box, when it's sold for a lot of money to people whose houses are full of crap, it's a "storage solution".
The solution pictured above is the R-Kive woodgrain cardboard storage box. It is, in my opinion, the Rolls Royce of such storage boxes. It's very sturdy, it doesn't come to bits when it's full, and it's a nice size. 40cm x 33cm x 26cm, in fact, which my maths tells me gives a storage capacity of.. erm.. (calculator..) 0.034 cubic metres. It doesn't sound so much when you put it like that, (I'm sure I've worked it out wrong) but even so, it's a decent size. You can fit about 60 VHS tapes inside one.
I know this because I have many of these boxes. OK, admittedly, I only have 5 of the luxury woodgrain ones, which I do love ever so much, but during my tidying today I counted and verified that I have another 40 of the only slightly less excellent R-Kive non-woodgrain plain cardboard boxes of the same size. This means that I must have.. erm... (calculator) at least 1.53 cubic metres of clutter stored therein. It doesn't sound so much when you put it like that.
Of course not all of my clutter is in these boxes, if they were then things would be a whole lot tidier. But the standard sized box is my weapon of choice when it comes to - if not 'de-cluttering' - at least 'tidying' slightly. I have several nooks and crannies around the place where collections of 2 or more of these boxes gather.
I only have 45 of these boxes, and I'm determined not to buy any more, so every so often when I run out of space, I try to condense the contents of a few boxes into less boxes, so that I have an empty box again. It gets harder as time goes on. Right now I'm down to about two 'free' boxes, although one is full of bubble wrap and the other is full of stuff which I'll need to turf out first of all.
There is still much to do, but today has definitely been a tidy Saturday. Already gone from my bedroom are many useless elastic bands, some dried-up pens, a couple of VHS video cases, (I can't throw these all away at once, there is nothing wrong with them, but I can manage one at a time) a desk lamp which never really worked quite right but has now shown weakness by allowing the bulb inside to go, several large cardboard boxes of non-regulation size, and a whole tea chest which has now been emptied.
The tea chest is important because it will be the final one from my previous house moves 9 and 13 years ago, respectively. Its disappearance will therefore doubtless be of some significance in a way I can't quite grasp just now. Most importantly, the space it occupied has now been occupied by three storage boxes moved from elsewhere, resulting in a greater appearance of tidiness. There is still room for another four storage boxes to go on top, too, so I might take that opportunity to reduce the clutter in the hallway, currently home to 15 storage boxes, but soon perhaps only 11.
I swear I'm going to get my life back in some kind of order before the year is out. It's been too long. And I suspect that people are getting quite tired of listening to me talking about my never-ending tidy-up now. :-)
Lookie! I have space in my room at last! Of course it doesn't have that dotted line around it in real life, I just put it in to make it easier to see in the photo.
It might not seem that impressive, but after nine months of almost non-stop tidying, (who am I kidding?) it's always nice to see progress of some kind. And what progress it is. As you can see, top left, there is still a fair clutter build-up by the door, but once I squeeze in, I can walk straight across to the other side of the room without having to step over or squeeze past anything. It is quite something.
That box at the top right of the dotted space area is full of documents from work, which I shall be dumping into the recycling bin the next time I'm in the office. Even more space will soon be mine!
So as you can see, progress is good.. All that's left is to tackle the bits around the sides... which as you can see, may be a little trickier..
Money is the root of all evil. So they say. And actually they're wrong. They're quoting the Bible, but they don't know it. And what it actually said was "The love of money is the root of all evil."
For a good long part of my life, I didn't really have very much - or indeed any - money. During my grand tidy-up of old papers, I was surprised at how, as recently as fifteen years ago, just how many bills I managed not to pay on time - or at all - and how many red reminders and letters from debt collection agencies that resulted in.
But getting a decent job (actually two jobs, for a while) was the start on the road to turning it all around. It took about five years to get out of debt (although I was only really trying for about three of them) and I eventually reached the point where I had more money than I owed.
For a couple of years after that, I remained reasonably cash-positive, although I think I was still so delighted at being able to buy things that I bought lots of things I didn't really need. (Many of them I still have, and are part of the reason why 2007 is "The Year Of Tidying-Up", as discussed previously.)
According to the chart I printed this evening (because yes, I keep records, and yes, I know how to use the chart function in Excel), I can see that it seems to be around 2002 where I really became rather interested indeed in counting my beans. And slowly, through careful attention to the proper feeding and watering of my investments, suddenly they began to grow.
It's not just about earning money - it's about spending it wisely. That means being slightly more cautious before spending hundreds of pounds on shiny toys and baubles.. it means making sure you're not spending more than you need on those everyday bills (gas, electric, phone, etc), it means paying more attention to what interest rate you get on your bank account and ISA. (No, really, everyone should have an ISA.)
It has been suggested that paying such attention to pennies is somewhat mean. In my defence I'd say I'm not quite that bad. There are plenty of ways that I could cut my living costs to the bone, but I don't. You have to have some fun, after all. That said, there's no point in spending 45p a minute calling a mobile phone if you can do it for 6p, and things like that do get my attention.
Without really trying I've spent most of this evening thinking about money. Checking what I have, and where it is, and if it has gone up any, and whether there is any extra free money to be had by moving to a better-paying savings account. I applied for one just a moment ago, in fact. Every good boy deserves 6.25% interest, wouldn't you say?
It was in a similar mood a few months ago that I tried to open a savings account with the nice people at the Halifax. I'm a web person so I do that kind of thing online, and it all seemed to go quite well until they decided, at the end of the application, that to comply with money-laundering legislation, they needed to verify my identity, and that I would need to prove my identity by means of the supply of varying pieces of identifying documentation.
Eventually a list arrived in the post, complete with helpful Government leaflets thanking me for taking the time to fight the war on terrorism. All very nice too. But I find myself stuck - the documents it wants, I do not have. I must supply two, or maybe even three, documents from the list they provide. I call the Halifax Help Line to see what they can do.
Birth Certificate.. OK, everyone should have one of these. I have one, I'm just not sure where it is. I do have a photocopy. Will that do? "No," I am assured by the man on the phone.
Passport.. Not got one of these..
Driving Licence.. I don't drive.
Oh dear, we have a problem. The big three pieces of documentation, and I don't have them. Well, don't worry, there are other documents they can accept, just for such an occasion. So if I could send a copy of my Shotgun Licence instead, all will be well.
Is that a trick question? Apparently, no it's not. Alas, while remaining entirely in this country and travelling only by bus, I have little cause to own or be firing any shotguns.
Tax forms from the inland revenue? I have a P60, will that do? "Ah, no, except for a P60," they say.
Bank statement? I have one of those, surely.. Ah. A recent bank statement. Recent being last three months. Remember how about.. oh, four months ago, I reported that I had got my bank to only send me one bank statement a year?
Identity card? No. Residence permit? No. Benefit book? No. Construction industry photocard? No. Disabled badge? No.
Phone bill? Yes! Well, a mobile phone bill. "No sir, it has to be a landline bill." Ah.. Well, the landline isn't in my name. (It was installed years ago. I pay the bills but never bothered to change the name on the account.)
Gas or electric bill? Yes! Yes! I have those! And they're in my name! Of course for best value I have my gas and electricity with Powergen, who send me my bills online.. so a printout of that would be OK? No, it will not be OK. Apparently it has to be a proper bill.
So we're really doing very well. Of course in the meantime, rapid and seismic changes in interest rates mean that the Halifax account I was applying for is not as good value as it was anyway. Given that it's going to be near-impossible to prove that I am who I say I am, I may not be able to bother.
What a world. I got enhanced CRB checked a few years back, I had to provide SEVEN pieces of documentation to prove I was who I said I was, and there didn't seem to be a problem then. Maybe I should just keep my savings under the matress instead.
Apparently last year, the Government came up with a list of pledges, for World Environment Day. And since being green is an important part of my international playboy lifestyle, I like to help the dolphins whenever and wherever possible. So let's review:
"1. I promise I will take a shower instead of a bath."
Absolutely not. Under no circumstances. I went seven years without taking a bath (because I lived somewhere which only had a shower, silly..) and eventually I couldn't stand it a moment longer. I like a nice bath. I save the environment by not having as many of them as perhaps I should do, which is very carbon neutral, although possibly a little stinky.
"2. I promise I will put a water saving device in my toilet."
Er.. no? Actually while I was having my bathroom ripped out and replaced with a new one, I did have the toilet replaced by a super-luxury device which has a much smaller tank and two flush buttons - a water-saving number one flush for number ones, and the monster number two flush, for number twos. I am always careful to flush accordingly.
"3. I promise I will turn the tap off when I brush my teeth"
Whose daft idea was that? Admittedly I did try this, as well as turning the tap off when shaving, but it is very annoying - because you keep having to turn the tap back on and off every time you want to wash away your toothpaste and bristles. Really if this saving the planet thing is going to catch on, it's going to need some work on its usability.
"4. I promise to use rechargeable batteries instead of disposable ones"
I quite like this idea anyway - problem is that I keep losing my battery chargers, so have to keep buying new ones. But I'm trying to rid myself of all disposable batteries - just as soon as I've used up all the ones I have.
"5. I promise to use a reusable bag when I shop, rather than plastic carriers."
I sometimes do this. But usually Tesco deliver my shopping in their nice little vans. They still use carrier bags, though. I could ask them not to, but then they'd have to unpack their green boxes in my kitchen, and I'm not sure if I'm that ready to accomodate strangers into my home beautiful.
"6. I promise to air my washing in public - not in the tumble dryer"
I'd love to, but where I live has this rule about not having the nice look of the locale messed up by having people's underwear flying in the breeze.
"7. I promise I will boil only the water I need, rather than filling the kettle every time."
I do try to do that - but my kettle doesn't seem to like boiling small amounts of water, and usually pays me back by dumping large lumps of limescale into my tea if I try. Perhaps I should buy a new one.
"8. I promise I will share my car journeys to work with a colleague, cycle or replace those car journeys with public transport at least once a week."
I don't go to work by car. In fact when I can be bothered to go to work, I share the journey with hundreds of other people. Who knew that using the trains would save the planet?
"9. I promise that I will pay back the environmental impact of any air travel I take"
No problem - I've never flown anywhere and can't imagine starting any time soon.
"10. I promise I will organise or volunteer for an environmental project in my local community."
No. That sounds altogether like a nuisance.
There must be easier ways to save the world..
People can be funny things. So unpredictable, so.. annoying. And none more annoying than me, today, if all reports are to be believed.
It didn't start well. Opening my work email brought several grumbles from someone who was obviously well miffed that I had pointed out some showstopper mistakes in something that I was supposed to do something with.
Yes, it seems that I'm the bad guy, because don't I realise that it costs money to change things? And that they would make the changes "this time" but in future would I please speak only to the idiot who signed off the entirely faulty piece of work, in order that they can ignore me rather than look bad. Actually that last bit I added on myself. But nonetheless - it seems that I'm the bad guy for saying "er, hold on, this isn't right" rather than the person who signed off something which was so unusably bad and so entirely wrong in the first place. No "thanks for saving us from looking stupid in front of millions" for me, dear me no. No thanks at all for getting in the way.
A stroppy phone call (them to me) resulted in me almost losing my temper, but needless to say I was nothing but sweetness and light, even if I did need to shout them down to stop them from moving on to the next item on their list of my wrongs, before I had a chance to respond to the first one. Needless to say, my responses didn't count for a lot, they just waited for me to stop speaking and then continued as if nothing had happened. Admittedly they always do that - I think they think they're "handling" me - but it doesn't stop it being especially irritating in this case.
I wrote a big stroppy email (their boss, their boss's boss) complaining about it but didn't send it in the end.
The afternoon brought about more floundering emails from their department and associates, such that I had to send more 'firm' emails stating the case. The people who "get it," got it and were cool. The people who don't get it, didn't reply. We'll see how successful that strategy is for them.
This evening, a trip to the internet to visit my favourite discussion hole, where items of great weight and import are discussed. It seems that I am not soup of the day here either, being described as an "odious little wanker" by someone who I had disagreed with and labelled as a 'face man'.
Can't please some people some days. Still, there's always tomorrow.
