Monthly Archives: July 2006

The Cock Islands

The Cook Islands have their own top level domain and the authorities there wisely decided to follow the example of the UK and have logical sub-domains for different types of organisation. So, if you’re a non-profit group you’d get an “.org.ck”, if you’re an academic body you’d get an “.edu.ck”, ISPs would get a “.net.ck” and so forth. Obviously a lot of thought went into this so surely they wouldn’t be so stupid as to lumber commercial organisations with “co” would they ? Because that would mean you’d end up with ludicrous domains like perfumes.co.ck and gifts.co.ck….oh FFS…


Betties

weird seedy head thingOutside our bedroom window is a little courtyard with a 10ft wall that separates us from the general public. This wall provides the local community with several valuable facilities including a rubbish disposal service and drunk-person-amusement arcade. When drunk people are not walking along the perilously high wall, shouting, they are busy finding the most bizarre and dangerous objects to throw over it. This picture shows the latest flying curio we discovered. It looked so intriguing through the window that we had to rush out and see what it was to prevent our imagination taking a grip; Michele was convinced it was some sort of explosive.
We still don’t know what it is but suspect it might be a thing that grows grassy hair when wet, because it looks like it has seeds on its head. So, we’ve wet its head and keep its string suspended in a bottle of water in the hope that some sort of funky capillary action will make it grow.

It has been disgustingly, insufferably, inhumanly hot over the past week. In fact the last month’s average was about 10 degrees C over what I consider healthy. I CAN’T COPE WITH IT! Really! It’s killing me. Never is there a moment where I’m not, at best, uncomfortable, and at worst, feeling ill. My clothes are either soaked or covered in a salty pattern that looks like a map of Narnia; very attractive.
My breathing suffers too and I’ve been hitting an inhaler. Yet still people manage to go to work on 50C+ busses and 40C+ tubes. How do they do it ? It’s bizarre.
I took the day off work yesterday; let’s face it, I wasn’t going to be able to work in this surreal weather. It’s not like heat in other places, this is like warm Jelly all around you. If the propect of moving to a country that can do air-con wasn’t immiment I would move abroad…if only to get away from all of the pratts who say things like:

  • It never gets hot enough over here.It reached 34C this year and it’s only JULY for christ’s sake. Haven’t you noticed that for the past 35 years at least August is hotter ?
  • Yeah but it doesn’t stay hot for very long over here. For at least two months now my pants have been like some sort of hydroponic experiment.
  • I love this heat!You’re a sick weird fuck who should be living in the rainforests

Praise be to the Walpole for fixing their aircon. It was blissful. Stepping outside afterwards reminded me of North America: the bit between the house and the car where it’s way too hot. The difference is that over here it’s like that everwhere without a break! ARRGGGHH!


Visa Arriva

It took several years and lots of money, but

I now have a U.S. Immigrant Visa!

It consists of a tantalising, fat, yellow envelope that we’re not allowed to open. In the next six months I have to take it into America and give it to them, at which point they will probably get me to pledge allegiance to the federal reserve and the new world order or something.
All very exciting, but we now have to seriously start thinking about how we get over there! Eek!


Whatever happenned to…

Time is passing alarmingly quickly at the moment; sometimes it feels like Michele, Humph and I are just watching it shoot past the window as we share food and watch the telly. The US visa application has been taken as far as it can be and we await the next chapter with a combination of excitement and dread. Honestly, all we want to do is live together, that’s it. I’m not trying to seek my fortune in the land of opportunity or anything like that. But a bunch of people who have assumed some sort of power are stopping us.
Michele’s just gone to bed to get some sleep before her new job tomorrow. Meanwhile Humph has realised she is tired after all and has flown off my head and onto her cage.

Some indications that the world is, owing to the relentless passage of time, moving on:

  • Alex’s blog. One of the first posts outlined the blog as an attempt to prove to me that his life was not the “impossibly glamourous and interesting” party I believed. Bad luck Alex, you falied on that one. What with Vikings, 5y, laser nurses and powerpuff girls, it looks pretty fucking glamorous and interesting to me.
  • Dan is back. Two years…two years.
  • We’ve been married nine years. I mean…honestly…that can’t be right
  • My little sister is 31

There are loads more, but I don’t want to scare you (me)…