This morning I had to go back to see the doctor – I took the whole day off because I fancy a break and maybe a long walk. My BP wasn’t as high as last week but the blood-test showed high cholesterol so he loaded me up with beta-blockers and cholesterol pills and packed me off. To celebrate, I had a low-fat fry-up breakfast and read some more of my book. Lovely.

After getting a load of red-necks to sing along with that kazakhstani country classic “Throw the Jew Down the Well”, I didn’t think Borat could get any better. He has. Download it NOW!.
Lovely evening with my parents after a nice chat with Alex this afternoon. My dad told lots more stories including the one where Uncle Bill proved that you can, in fact, polish a turd. Details in a later blog.
P.S. Roast Lamb tonight – I will sleep well.

Taking a leaf out of Alex’s book, I’ve decided to be less candid with people’s names.
So, a couple of hours after I left Arthur, Benny, and Charlie, in the pub on Thursday, I received a call from Arthur inviting me down to the Walpole to join them for a swift half. Sensing danger I politely refused..and besides, by that time I was all settled in with Michele, Humph and the laptop. On reflection, this was probably the most sensible thing I have ever done.
In a nutshell, Arthur and Charlie performed their magic trick – walking down to the station and then turning into a pub. Strapped for cash, Charlie was forced to use his credit card and therefore opted for double measures to achieve the minimum purchase price. An hour later, they had downed 11 vodkas. Each. No-one knows what happenned next, but we do know several small pieces of information that may help them reconstruct the events. Arthur fell asleep on the tube, and woke up at Heathrow. Twice. Feeling beaten, he alighted, fell asleep on a bench and puked all over the place.
Charlie regained consciousness in a strange land with which he was unfamiliar. In this land, something was preventing his mouth from working properly. Broke and bewildered, he phoned home: his mum and dad. Unfortunately, in his highly refreshed state, he found considerable difficulty in conveying items of information essential to being picked up: where he was, who he was, when he was etc etc. Fortunately, a friendly native cleverly deduced his predicament and shouted “New Eltham” down the phone. His mum, dad and a set of very heavy vibes, drove from their home in Petts Wood and collected him from the pub bench on which he was now sleeping. Charlie has given up drinking. Which means he missed the Music Department do on Friday after work… Well done that man. Sorry – I shouldn’t complain, I knew what to expect. And they had wine. And I ended up waffling on for hours to the HoD about some rubbish or other.

Saturday was great. Watched 2 episodes of Quincy (excellent) and then went up to the HobGoblin to investigate a claim I found on the web that it had an open wireless access point. This turned out to be a lie but I spent a very agreeable afternoon in the sunny garden with Benny, Jez, Col, Welsh Mike, Adele at al. Even had a nice argument with Jez about copyright and piracy (a separate blog entry on this one I think). Even better, Jez gave Michele the recipe for the cider and mustard sauce he does the pork chops in and she made it for tea! Superb. Later that night Benny dropped in, he’d stayed at the pub until the evening. No vodkas tho’.

Work being quiet is one of the greatest joys. Today I managed to get loads done, have a nice lunch, get loads more done and then go out for an after-work pint in the HG. There’s no doubt about it, it’s a good place for a summer evening drink. Paula is off to Italy tomorrow so it was her “last night” drink. Nice day. Still not managed to meet Alex in the Urban75 chat room. Disappointing despite having a couple of very enjoyable chats there with other punters.

Went to the quack this morning to follow up on some surgery I’ve been expecting for months. While I was there he checked my chest (at my request – I’m a martyr to mucus), then checked my heart, and then my blood pressure, and then looked worried. He did his best to reassure me that everything was ok, which considering I hadn’t considered anything wouldn’t be ok, got me worried. Now I’ve got to have a blood test and go back to see him next week. Arses. What I forgot to tell him was that last night I’d drunk a lot more than usual.
You see the Hobgoblin has new management and Brodie came up for an “official visit” to introduce his old regulars (before….the troubles) to the new guvnor.
Needless to say it was very fun and very Guiness…
Work’s been pretty good recently. Maybe that’s because of the excitement about the new project…but maybe it’s just because there’s so few people about I’m not getting called all the bloody time…in fact, that’s it. It’s quiet, so I can work. Simple really.

Last night I started feeling cage-bound (a bit like cabin fever but without the sea) and so decided to go out for a pint with a mate of mine, Pete. Annoyingly I didn’t have his number so decided to “cold canvas” him as he only lives 10 minues walk away. Of course, he wasn’t in. Undeterred I went to one of the only, if not the only proper pub in London, which just happens to be 15 seconds walk from his house. I had a beautiful pint of Guiness in the cool, sunny, evening air and enjoyed every drop. After this I decided to walk down to Brockley. Just as I got to the “Brockley Balti”, as was, I bumped into Beth, and we had a nice chat before going into the place to meet Matt and his mate who were waiting for a curry to take home and get bollocksed with. Really nice chat we had. Afterwards, I popped into the Brockley Barge (previously the “Breakyour Arms”) and downed a quick whisky. Optimistically, I called by Pete’s to see if he was there, which, by the amazing effect of passage-of-time, he was! So we went back to the best pub in London and had a nice pint of Guiness together.
All in all a perfect evening, and the excercise derived from wandering around New Cross and Brockley meant that I slept like a baby!
Typically crap day at work, although Scorpio held up; good server.

Piracy is rife, and as a result the world is full of war, hate, floods and famine. If it wasn’t for those evil pirates selling low-price DVDs, CDS and free MP3s to the younger generation we’d all be happy as larry and living happy, fulfilling, lives.

You know what else is wrong with the world ? Bloody Political Correctness! Luckily, the world has Michael Howard and the Tory party, who manage to shock all of the Lefties out of hating New Labour quite as much as they normally do, by standing up in public and suggesting that the Police should abandon “PC” in favour of “proper policing”. Yes, nowadays the Police can’t just beat up black people on the street without having to give them a written report of why they did it. Oh hold on, didn’t the police have to do that anyway ?…never mind, at least all these POLITICALLY CORRECT laws (like criminal trials/needing a reason to stop and search/not being able to beat the crap out of people because their eyes are too close together) are on the way out. Thanks Mr Howard. And thanks Mr Blair who will surely steal these groundbreaking ideas by next week.

Nominet is a bureaucratic cess-pit. More on that tomorrow.

The weekend went so quickly that I woke up Friday night and it turned out to be monday morning. Hardly fair that. It was too hot and humid to actually do anything so, yet again, I didn’t. Nice Sunday evening with my mum and dad though…it turns out my great grandparents (on my mum’s side) are from Merthyr Tydfil. We already know my dad’s side were originally Huguenots so I am the product of the Welsh and the French. No wonder I hate English nationalists..in fact all nationalists.

Lovely morning. Scorpio (q.v.) decided to have a nervous breakdown at 9:05 today; a Monday morning. To be honest, I know how he feels. In computer years Scorpio is approaching middle-age and probably having a mid-life crisis. I’ve brought him up from a baby you know. Bless his little backplane.
Anyway, the tantrum resulted in none of the hundreds of people who work here having e-mail access for a couple of hours. For a Monday morning, that is pretty sucky. But we got everything up by 10 and after some counselling I persuaded Scorpio that life was worth living and so he’s back doing a sterling job. Should be the last nasty for a while as well. Good lad.
Anyway the prospect of working on this software project is making me more excited. I only hope we can keep our (workplace owned) flat in the mean-time, otherwise life is going to get crappy.
Now for a nice evening with me, Batly, Humph, red wine and old-skool hip hop 🙂

It seems odd that the morning after reading an article about how “Greatness and late rising are natural bedfellows”, I realised one of the biggest problems in my life could well be that I don’t do enough excercise…or even just moving about. Recently I’ve been sleeping really badly and I have a suspicion it might be the lack of excercise. Since moving here, my bedroom is 5 minutes walk from my office and so walking to work no longer cuts the mustard.

The Right to be Lazy by Paul Lafargue, is a stonking good read by the way, as well as being a socialist classic…

Audioblogging.
It’s just WRONG! Run away…run away…

Although this does provide some interesting potential for adding some revolting and suggestive noises to each post. Hmm.