“A bad workman allways blames his tools”. As a bad workman I regularly used to blame my pathetic collection of tools for my inability to do anything with DIY.
A year or two ago I picked up a brand new Bosch drill complete with bits and everything for about 35 quid from a superb DIY shop that was changing management. Today was the first time I have been able to use it for a legitimate purpose.
Let me tell you, if I’d have owned that drill 10 years ago I may well have been a much happier and more rounded individual. Using a drill that drills true, with a wide collection of bits and screwdriver tips is one of the most gorgeous thrills, particularly to a 30-something man feeling emasculated by current life events. Sad but true. Why am I now humming “satisfaction” by Benny Benassi I wonder ?
Anyway, something that would have taken me several hours of swearing, bleeding and frustration took less that 15 minutes: fixing the kitchen units that Michele previously kicked to shit. Not only did the drill-hole for the screw work perfectly but I used the drill to screw the screw into the wood with less effort than I imagine it would take to push a cocktail stick into Jack Straw’s eyeball.
I can’t wait to try out the masonry drills now. After years of using my dad’s Black and Decker, with its unique “vibrowobble” action maybe I’ll be able to put a shelf up without the raw plugs falling out 10 minutes later.
Maybe bad workmen are bad because they have shite tools, in which case their blame is well deserved.
Anyway – enough freudian rambling.
Nathan Barley started on C4 last night. As Charlie Brooker and Chris Morris are two of my all time heroes, and as Nathan Barley is a chracter beautifully crafted from pure bile, I was dead keen on watching it. Inevitably I got back from the pub, ate my pizza (from Planet Pizza – “for pizzas that are out of this woooorrrldd”) and fell asleep, waking just in time to forget watching the end credits. Michele confirmed my fears that it would be a let down and crap, and so I went to bed.
Today I looked-up a load of reviews and found a constant theme of people relaying the pre-broadcast press-releases followed by some very unimaginative insults that made my cynical side question whether they had ever watched it.
Joyfully, some lovely individual had ripped, encoded and seeded a juicy bittorrent this morning. Thank you, whoever you are, and I’m still seeding BTW.
So I watched it, and thought it was really excellent!
It’s certainly not a straight TV adaption of the original column. In fact I thought Nathan Barley was almost an incidental character. Perfect, because too much of that irritating wanker would result in even the most tolerant pacifist setting up a local extermination mob. Instead the protagonist, Dan Ashcroft, is a troubled cynical soul that really cheered me up. I don’t know why watching miserable, cynical TV cheers me up, but after the bloody awful week I’ve had, only Monkey Dust or this would have been able to make me feel better. Arseholes to the reviewers (especially that nob from the telegraph), this is top stuff.

Three things I’m always banging on about that I feel are now empirically correct:

1. Trackback is a stupid idea and will backfire resulting in more spam for everyone
2. TV is better now than ever before
3. Since “streamlining”, the British postal service is now more shit than ever before and makes the US service look efficient and well designed

Item 1 above is self explanatory. Item 2 will totally bemuse the pretentious-middle-classes; they don’t watch TV so will never have seen BBC FOUR. But they lose: I’d love to be the sort of person who can say they honestly prefer the output of Radio 4 and BBC ‘FOUR’ to everything else…and amazingly, I genuinely do! Really! They’re superb! OK, they may well have dumbed down, and I wouldn’t know, but I really don’t think so.
Item 3, whilst being obvious to any current British citizen, may need expanding upon for overseas readers.
Ten years ago, Michele came to England and was shocked by how poor our expectations were with respect to public services. Understandable when you consider how service-centered US culture can be. However, one thing she couldn’t knock, because it was so impressive, was the postal service. At that time, the GPO was the best in the world. Super-cheap, super-efficient and super accurate. Nowadays, since the makeover, you are lucky if you receive 50% of your mail. It’s so sad to see. Today my dad received the second half of his birthday present: a DVD. It was supposed to arrive yesterday but the ‘110’ on the package, printed by a computer, in a very clear font, meant that the contractor-postie felt it really belonged to number 100…Luckily the people at 100 didn’t like 1950s French comedies and dropped it off to him.
The older I become, the more of an anarchist I become. The only way a service will not only become but remain efficient is if the people involved do it out of a sense of pride rather than a sense of duty. That won’t happen while you’ve got some useless tosser of a “team leader” breathing down your neck, because his/her manager is breathing down her neck, because…you get the idea.
Loyalty goes out of the window when your bosses start to treat you like shit. Therefore capitalism is doomed….but what will follow scares me. That too will fail, but not until a lot of blood is spilt. I don’t want that either.

Another thing that worries me is that in the past week I have encountered two, seperate, voice-recognition systems at the end of a phone-number. I always said that we would know for sure when a VR algorithm started working because the call centres would all close down. It seems that day is nearing. Bye Newcastle, Wales, Belfast, Bangalore. You’re about to be shafted. Not just yet – these systems are still way crap. But another five years and we may be there.

We’ve all had shit wine before, but tonight I’m drinking some “2 for a fiver” Vino Collapso with so few pretentions that they named it “Egesto”. If it was called “Excreto” no one would buy it. Odd really; would you rather consume something excreted or something egested ?
Tastes a lot better than the Tesco 2.99 screw-top vinegar.

Why’s the video so cheap ? Because I robbed it from your gran’s place!
How much for that mobile ? Your daughters life!

Yes! You too can experience the rich culture of the jewel in London’s crown.
Come to Lewisham!
A great place to raise your family.

The weekend is over and, yet again, the week has already decided to give me a load of shit. It’s bad enough that the organisational magazine has published a “story” by me illustrated with a picture of me looking like a a homeless simpleton (something that many people have gone out of their way to tell me), but also that it consists of my face under the word “failure”. Thanks.

As the article was published this morning, our mail server: scorpio, decided to get all fucked up. As I was almost crying whilst trying to fix it, and Sue was doing her best to keep my spirits up. It became obvious that I’ve been here too long.

Well we got it sorted in the end, but to most people it will have been a crappy outage that occurred while they were reading an article about how well CS cope with systems problems. I resign.

Sunday is the day we spend a few happy hours with my parents. This week, not only was my sister going to make one of her rare appearances, but we decided to bring Humph over with us. How fortunate then that my dad’s newly purchased car decided to really piss everyone about by breaking down on Lewisham Way. BTW – if you too fell for the “Privilege” ads then picture this: you break down, phone their number and get told that the office is now closed…and the worst part is that you get told it by a recording of Joanna Lumley. That’s just too much.

In the end I called Orange DQ and got the number for “Green Flag”. Annoyingly, Green Flag were really bloody good, and their (sub-contracted) engineer was not only knowledgable, but also friendly and helpful. It was almost an example of why privatisation/outsourcing works! Bastards! OTOH it is the only example I can think of that supports the arguments.
More tomorrow (See you wednesday Tobes if I haven’t written already 🙂

A very talented friend of mine, Andy, has made a song out of this thing I sent him, and I think it sounds excellent!. Michele’s only comment was “why isn’t Andy famous?”. Nice one Andy.

Eating fresh anchochovies, croquettes and squid, with a litre of Spanish beer, in the sun, with the squawks of the native parakeets is a lovely experience. During the day we walked miles over those two days. Not just in 2d either, we also climbed to the highest tower in Gaudi’s Cathedral – a very scary experience for me. Not only were the safety standards far less rigourous than anything I’ve ever seen before, but I was climbing the trecherous stairs with a scary piss-taker (Andy) who kept pretending to fall over the side, and the world’s clumsiest person (Tony) who did his best to put me at rest before nearly killing himself. It was great to reach terra-firma afterwards. Regretfully I was persuaded to sing the theme tune to Blakes 7 after this without realising, until far too late, that Dave was videoing it on his all-too-clever camera. So, I will always be blackmailable from now on…

In the evenings we walked miles between bars and generally laughed our arses off. The place was full of stag and hen nights, however we chose not to adopt their policies of reinforcing the stereotypes of the English as a bunch of drunk, threatening fuckwits. Sadly, we failed.
On the subject of stereotypes, it would appear the Spanish are quite proud of their outrageous animal abuse reputation. After seeing the third stall of parrots in disgustingly tiny cages in La Ramblas I couldn’t take it any more and fucked off with tears in my eyes. Michele would have gone postal.

It was very odd to be with old schoolmates on a holiday. The last time we all went on holiday I was 16 and the venue was a canal boat on the Warwickshire ring canal. Despite the fact that we have all changed beyond recognition, nothing had changed. We laughed, argued, drank and overall had a great time. I needed a holiday so badly and didn’t even realise it. This was perfect. I deliberately didn’t check my email until monday, despite the billion or so cybercafes about the place, and it really helped my state of mind. The only problem was Michele: I missed her and Humph so much.
It’s nice to be home, but crap to be back in the deadlock of New Cross/Work/Penury. And work was really unforgiving today. So busy with so many tedious jobs… fortunately there are quite a few colleagues under similar pressure and we can get together after work in the Union to drown our sorrows.

Coming back to England from anywhere else can be a very depressing experience, especially when you live in New Cross and “anywhere else” is Barcelona. This morning we were sitting on a beautiful beach [ a seaside town, the name of which escapes me. All I know is that it is next to another seaside town called “Tossa” – Fnarr ] in the hot sun. A few hours later I was freezing my arse off outside Euston station.

BTW – to those that foolishly thought that Stanstead airport was in, or near, North London.

WRONG!

It’s right next to bastard Colchester. It took me and Andy over an hour to drive back to Euston. After the next struggle with public transport it was lovely to get home of course: I’d missed Michele and Humphrey.

It was Dave’s stag weekend and it was pretty bloody brilliant. Despite feeling like an ignorant English wanker becakse I can’t speak Spanish… I just think that it’s so rude, arrogant and insulting to spend time in a country and not make the slightest effort to learn at least some language. O-Level (GCSE) French hardly makes someone fluent, but I don’t feel a pratt in France when I order some food in a restaurant.
There’s too much to write now, so I’ll write more tomorrow.

You didn’t see it, I’ll put money on that, but I’ll bet you didn’t see it last time either: Home based on a J.G.Ballard story.But you’d love it!Last time it was on, it did something to me. This time it did more. Probably the most affecting film about life, pain and insanity I have ever seen. Both times I got the shivers…but this time I (pretty much) forced Michele to watch it…and she was extremely distrubed by it – because she is right. Tears and everything. I defy anyone to watch it without becoming very disturbed indeed. Anyone who has had it anyway.
It’s beautiful, yet one of the scariest things I’ve ever seen. The next one is the trip scene from Easy Rider. The one after that is Videodrome…Anyone who got affected by these will find this very difficult watching. Blair Witch my arse.
The whole thing is particularly weird because we’re in…on a saturday (reeeeeeeally cool according to the Grauniad – pillocks) and missing a really top party hosted by a friend in Greenwich. And we would have gone too. Nowadays we tend to like staying in on a saturday together. Also for the last two nights I haven’t slept due to nervous-birdishness and the idea of leaving the house rather than staying in with the flock seems ridiculous.
Please find, get and watch Home. Otherwise this blog will seem line a load of old toot.

Prince Harry has had to apologise for attending a friends “natives and colonials” party as a Nazi. Would that be a native nazi or a colonial nazi ? I’d love to see what other people went as…they probably made Harry look PC.
Anyway, at last this solves the mystery of Harry’s parentage – he’s definately the got some of Prince Philip’s genes in him…not to mention a touch of Saxe-Coburg.
And on the subject of nazis, the fucking NF are planning to march in Woolwich on saturday. So I hope you’ll join the UAF demo there. We can’t afford to be outnumbered by the scum again.