http://www.geocities.com/jon_donnis/SportsInjuryPics
As Michele says, “serves them right for doing that stupid shit rather than sitting on the sofa, drinking wine.”

…and the cycle continues…another week, and then another week, and then another….
The smell of shit in our flat reached improbable levels of penetration this week. The smell appears to originate from under the floor at the base of our stairs. Favourites for the cause are extreme damp or decaying rodents. The downstairs neighbours are also suffering so it’s not all bad 🙂
Paul the pick was kind enough to give me some carpet offcuts to cover the floorboards down there, but for various reasons I had to leave it at work over the weekend. So I got some jossticks off the bloke in the newsagent and they shield the smell even if they don’t eradicate it. Sadly Michele finds the odour of jossticks more repellent than the smell of jobbie…nil nil. Hmmm I wonder if you can get shit-scented jossticks ?
Saturday morning I did more mac work at Daydream and spent the rest of the afternoon in the Spice of Life with a couple of pints of cider and a good book. Luxury.
I’m not going to talk about the war because it’s too irritating, as is Julie Burchill. I wrote her letter over the weekend, but I don’t think she can read so it was probably a waste of time.

A great weekend. I’d arranged to work at Daydream on saturday and so was a tad sad at the prospect of missing out on the anti-war march. The last week, with the very expensive firework display in Iraq, had a profound effect on the anti-war protesters. Not only had it utterly depressed us, but it also increased the anger levels significantly. So when I got out of Daydream at mid-day (setting up a macintosh network really doesn’t take very long) I decided to see if anyone was marching. Were they ? At least 400,000 people marched! The weather was superb and the mood was fantastic. Even being on my own was fun. As it turned out I bumped into April from the Library and we marched together and even got to hear some of the Hyde Park speeches. As usual the speeches were so inspiring that we fucked off to the pub and stayed there for the rest of the afternoon. Nice little pub, the Three Tuns off Oxford Street. We also met another group of protesters and wallowed in self-rightous glory about the massive turn-out, and how inspiring it all was. Nice when that happens.

Leaving there, I ended up with a massive group of protestors who had blocked oxford street….at least I think that’s what happenned; the police were also blocking the street….and the side streets….and the roads off the side streets…
I realised that they could very easily box us in, and so fucked off quickly, and the sight of mounted police trotting towards the mele confirmed my cowardly decision as being the correct one. All along Park Lane, and intervals of about 50 feet were unmarked, white rental vans – stuffed tight with coppers. They were ready alright…
After finding a tube station that hadn;t been closed, Green Park, I went off to Greenwich and met up with Ian, Mod and Roland for a pleasnt evening in the pub which rounded off with a superb Vietnamese meal which i realised was my first meal of the day – oops!

Sunday morning my mum phoned asking if I wanted to join her and my dad on a walk around Sidcup meadows. What a beautiful place that is. On the way back I got a call from Brodie telling me he was in the Talbot and so I joined him for a pint…or two…
As I said – a great weekend.
BTW – Happy Birthday Alex!

Well I did write a blog about being a sad twat while Michele is away:going to the pub every night and eating pizza. But mozilla decided to hang on me and I lost the blog! That can’t be right, this isn’t windows! Oh bollocks. Well it’s the first time I’ve ever lost anything under Linux…brings back horrible memories of…the dark days, and I didn’t have to reboot. This machine (teapot) has been up for 32 days and the last reboot was due to a house guest pulling the plug on it so I shouldn’t complain. Browsers will be browsers. There’s a good teapot, good boy!

Obviously we don’t really know the civilian death toll in Iraq, but according to Wanker and President Blair it’s zero. Our side isn’t doing too well though, we’ve lost 12 people in a helicopter “accident”. So despite our incredible military technology and the fact that (according to Wanker) the Iraqi troops our on our side, we’ve managed to kill more of our own people than the enemy. Well done. It would be very rude and inappropriate to compare 8 of our marines dying in a US helicopter with the last Gulf war when we lost a bunch of troops to American “friendly fire”, so I won’t. They may not be able to kill Saddam, but they’re pretty damned good at offing the allies. Not very sporting though.
One convoy of troops, going deep into Iraq were surprised by the bloody foreigners returning fire. “But where here to help – we’re on your side,” they probably shouted “now put your guns down and let us kill you.” But these bloody arabs just understand the basics of modern warfare (the Americans always have to win) and kept firing. What choice did our brave boys have but to run away ?

Wanker and Rumsfeld decided to start the festivities with a “decapitation”, so they send in a bunch of stealth bombers and over 40 cruise missiles to “decapitate” Iraq.
Just before the all-clear sounds in Baghdad, Saddam Hussein appears on TV, his head still very much attached and verbally sticks up two fingers at the west. Aren’t the army a tiny bit embarrassed ?
Mind you, judging from the picture of Iraq’s fatherly dictator on the BBC news site, the rumours about him having a load of body doubles could well be true, and by the look of it they were contsructed by the Spitting Image team.

As Britain prepares to help the US slaughter the next wave of brown people in its mission to conquor the globe, it’s nice to spend time with some nature, before it’s all concreted over. So that’s what we did over the weekend. Two nice walks, one round Hilly Fields and one to the Tarn; one of the few places in Eltham that isn’t totally offensive.
By the way, taking a friday off of work is a really excellent thing to do – all weekends should be three days.

Michele flies off to the states today. Good timing eh ? In fact she may well be in the air when George Wanker Bush starts dropping the first bombs on the opressed masses of Iraq (to help rid them of the evil dictator that the U.S. put in power in the first place). I’m tempted to see if I can get a super-cheap flight and bugger off too. Nothing like a war on terror to clear the seats over the atlantic.

The last couple of days have had what Michele calls “Martin weather”; bright, sunny and freezing cold. I love it. The blue, blue, sky acts as a backdrop for trees and buildings that are glowing in the sunlight. The cold air keeps you alert…and life seems beautiful. God what a hippy I sound like…

Well anyway, I took friday off work for some lounging, and, apart from a brief period of work-related intense anger (fucking academics), it was a great day. Michele and I went for a walk around Hilly Fields and decided that we should pop in on Gina and baby Estelle. They were sitting out on the steps and we joined them for an hour or two, sitting in the sun having a laugh. It’s nice having big steps out front.
We spent the evening watching Red Nose Day….yes I know, I know…

Today I couldn’t bear to be inside so I took my h4x0R laptop into Greenwich to a pub that, I had been assured, has an open wireless network. It doesn’t, it just has a couple of crappy pay-as-you-go Internet kiosks… Arses. Nonetheless it provided a perfect opportunity to get on the DLR (still fun :), have a few pints of Guinness and read more of my book. Lovely.

oh yes, and we moved a day closer to the war.

During one of the pints of Guinness, I had an irritating thought: when you hear about world political leaders like David Trimble and Gerry Adams, or Sharon and Arafat, refusing to talk to each other, or share a table in a debate it makes you (me) think “oh for fuck’s safe grow up! It’s a little bit too serious for that sort of behaviour”.

But, say, what if in the fight against capitalism you were asked to join hands with the fascists…who also oppose capitalism. I’d find myself saying things like “under no circumstances would I cooperate with them”… shit.

Yeah well all I can say is that they don’t deserve to have a decent webmail system – ungrateful bastards. I sweated blood to make it work ok and integrate smoothly and they’re still whinging. On the whole, I’d say academics are scum. People with no discernable skills who think that they are saviours of the human race because they have written a paper on poverty (from the comfort of their houses in Islington, after a night at the theatre and an afternoon of red wine and shagging students). Ok that’s a generalisation….no it isn’t.

The small detached garage over the road is no longer home to an abandoned car, a fox/cat tunnel and a broken up-and-over door. Now it sheilds various piles of old crap from the elements….its change of use was presumably not approved by the council.
I pointed the development out to Michele who then directed me to the back window. Beyond our shabby mud-pit of a garden we are boxed in by a broken-down fence to the right separating us from an overgrown garden and and yet another broken fence directly ahead which borders the house of the junk-hording pymaniac. [sadly the pictures really don’t convey the true picture]. This bloke slowly fills his back yard with a huge variety of old crap, for example amongst other things, it contains

• office chairs, various
• plastic canteen chairs
• a wardrobe door
• plastic crates including bread crates
• a radiator
• wood, assorted
• gigantic metal rack
• plate glass
• loft insulation

Once enough crap is piled he sets fire to it, oblivious to any laws of chemistry which may prevent certain materials burning, or cause others to give of posionous fumes. During each blaze our house smells like chemical weapons research establishment. I’m waiting for the day when Hans Blix turns up with with a team of inspectors.

Then, in the most Philly accent you can imagine, Michele screamed “Look at this motherfucker out the back. Then there’s the smell of shit coming up the stairs…We’re paying nearly 700 quid a month for a place that’s basically in the fucking ghetto”…

Laugh ? I nearly leaked.

The “smell of shit coming up the stairs” she mentioned is a story for another day.

It’s been a long time since I last visited the Wickham Arms in Brockley. In fact it was on New Years Day 2002, and on that day I learned that the most excellent lardlord was leaving. What joy then to discover that the pub hasn’t changed at all since his departure. Therefore it is still my favourite pub in the world!

After work I met up with Pete Bates at his house in Brockley where Pete, Bill and Naomi (who is also Pete’s girlfriend) entertained me with some fascinating works of art that originated from various scrapheaps in South London. They could charge admission to their house…
Anyway after doing some geeking with Pete and his Linux boxen we had a few in the Wickham and listened to the live pub band. I don’t care what anyone says, you can’t beat a good pub rock band. Fuck pub DJs. Ok they’ve got some 0day tunez and a bored looking girlfriend, but where’s the fun ? A decent pub band full of hairy 50-somethings doing what they love is a league away from some pretentious teenager who is too crap to work for a proper nightclub.
Pete lives about a minute away from the pub and has a wireless network so it was only matter of time before I brought my laptop along and had a play. From the “garden” of the Wickham I was able to check my email which is all that matters 🙂 The AP isn’t even near his window! Thanks Pete and thanks for your wireless network.
Once home, Michele and I finished watching “Catch Me If You Can” on the iBook in bed. Sometimes it’s nice living in the future. Red wine and a good film in bed with someone you love….what could be better ?

Night all…