Ignore last night’s rambling blog. You can usually tell what sort of rubbish you’ll be reading by the time of the entry. Well this is sunday morning; give up now.

Owing to the close proximity to The Archers omnibus, I’ve accidentally become a regular listener to Desert Island Disks. Even when it’s someone I dislike or have never heard of. And it’s not just the freakshow style curiosity of sampling other people’s musical tastes, although Bobby Robson following “Is That All There Is ?” by Peggy Lee with “The Lady in Red” really did make me wonder about the state of his mental health. Freak!
The vastly different backgrounds of the guests highlights how strong the class divide still is in Britain. There are two type of guest: the rags to riches, and the rich to riches. The latter has the option of including a “low” period in their life story so as to earn themselves some strength of character.

It’s been tough recently. The Gsmiths party season notwithstanding. In the past few days I have be 0wned by Gsmiths for every hour of the day, with the exception of a couple of stolen hours in a bar at some point during the day. Even sleep doesn’t spare me. The “research project” into which I have fully become esconed doesn’t leave me for a second. Work, debt and an impending sense of doom have marred every aspect of my waking life.
But, despite what you might think, I’m feeling ok at the moment. Maybe some sort of end-of-the-road type relief, maybe a moment of clarity, maybe a moment of realisation that the 1.5L of red wine, that we bought with our Nectar points, has mysteriously fucked off. Who can tell ?
Well – the LRC christmas pissup and the Gsmiths Ball have now passed, and jolly good fun they were too, except for:

• The stupid amount of self-destructive drink consumed
• The near fight with someone whom I would have described as a close friend…until it became obvious he was nearly all the way to becoming a total tit
• The jaded feeling of ennui that comes about from experiencing that same-old-shit-for-another-year feeling
• The fear of moving house again
• The fear that by the time my Visa appliction reaches the US embassy the US will be yet another fascist state.

But, on the good side

• There are lots of work colleagues I’m really feeling close to
• My “old” friends I really miss and look forward to seeing over christmas
• Humph is on the back of my chair as I type and Michele is sitting nearby and I love them both
• I worked at Daydream today and achieved one or two minor things that make me feel better about my abilities. Good to see Ralph too. Refreshing good company
• my dreams are becoming more bizarre and thus more entertaining
• this album my dad gave me, “Mailbag Blues” is superb. Ranging from blues to the avant-garde via funk and Gong-style story-telling. I love it!
• A good friday. Nice pub visit at lunchtime with the usuals + Lucinda, Patrick and Brian, followed, later in the afternoon, by Sacha’s leaving do.

Merry Christmas folks.

This was a low weekend to accompany a low year. Apart from feeling miserable about the general state of our finances, the whole shebang looked pretty bleak. To top it all, our knackered old server packed up of Friday night (worst case scenario) which means it’ll be down till monday mid-morning. I managed to move over a chunk of stuff to dormouse but the blog is going to be 403 until monday. This entry is written offline. I hate computers.

Despite being a Microsoft-programming-ex-Israeli-para,
Joel manages to describe exactly how it is when it comes to writing code. The guy is alarmingly together. I wish I was the same. It’s gratifying to know I’m not alone with that sort of “programmers block”. Thanks Joel.

Well, following tradition, I’m not going to concentrate on the down side of life and instead attempt to describe the good bits:

• We’ve been trying to find an excuse to go back to Madras(q.v.) since the last visit. So we took my mum and dad there in the hope they would also dig it. Which I think they did. Such a nice evening: good, cheap food, wine, chatting and so forth. Life affirming stuff. If only the rest of life could be somuch fun.
• Humph. No set of bologs can be complete without me
  expressing how cute this bird is. Last night we took the laptop and the bird into the bedroom to watch Bridget Jones: The edge of reason… “Beyond the realms of reason” would be a more accurate title. Absolute crap, without any vestages of wit, realism or pleasure to be had. Luckily Humph decided to watch the film from the vantage point of the top of my head. He crapped in my hair twice, which was more stimulating and enjoyable than anything the film could provide.
• Talked a lot of embarrasing bullshit to total strangers on Friday. Sorry Mira.
• Lots of parties coming up. Sadly I’m not looking forward to any of them – but they usually end up being ok.
• Two nights ago we were rudely awoken by the sound of the sky falling in. Once I got
  my senses together and fully extracted my conscious mind from whatever sick, twisted, dream was being projected in my sleepyhead, I got up and looked out the window. Our little courtyard had been blessed with the addition of two new shovels. Either they were a gift from the heavens or some drunken wanker had seen them laying about on the street and, being a creative motherfucker, recognised their artistic potential. Being such an aesthete he/she also recognised that the noise created by throwing them over the wall would add to the artistic whole. Tosser.

New Cross…it’s just so raw and vibrant!!!!

Last night was pound-a-pint night at the Union. Foolishly, a bunch of us went along. The only comment that matters is from the head-dude there who complained that whilst he expects disgraceful behaviour from the students, he doesn’t appreciate it when it’s staff rolling around on the floor. At this point I feel it necessary to point out that I was not one of those involved in the bundles. Instead I was too busy talking obnoxious bollocks to complete strangers….
Anyway, a bad night’s sleep followed, during which I managed to get rid of any offers of a hangover by imbibing near fatal doeses of water. Don’t knock it; water is nature’s favourite detoxification treatment.

So today I tried to piece together the vague memory traces from last night and then decided that life is scary enough without doing that sort of thing.

This evening I think I might have, indavertantly, had birdie sex with Humph. She was getting all excited by my hand and wedding ring, as is natural 🙂 But then she got all low on the lap top, raised her wings and started doing these odd chirps. I took advantage of her trancelike state and stroked her neck. To understand why I would do this you need to know a few very important things:

1. Humph is normally way to wary to let us pet her. She’ll rub herself against us when she feels like it but she has to initiate it. Attempting to be physically tender will usually result in couple of warning bites.
2. In the wild, the back of the neck is the only part that they have trouble preening and so rely on other birds to do it for them
3. She has a lovely, fluffy neck.

I received a lovely email today from an old friend, Denni, who knows about these things and reckons Humph is “coming of age”…and I think she’s right. In birdy years she’s around puberty…

Being the sort of stay-at-home mid-30s, lacklustre, cosy couple we are, Michele and I watched Hard Spell. Very emotional watching these insanely brilliant, bright, young spellers get torn apart because they got one letter wrong in “Friesian”. They’ll all end up being destitue and miserable as a result of this experience…Although I do have to say that the winner, who successfully spelled “onomatopoeia”, deserved to win and confidentially expect that she will soon become President of the entire WORLD! Apparently Bush can’t even spell “fraudulent”.