5:40 today – not quite as bad as before. I’m putting the crap sleep down to the crap bed. There’s one good reason to be pleased about moving out I suppose. We’ve both been having intense and ever so slightly disturbing dreams again. I don’t remember what mine was about, apart from having a long argument with someone about why HTML e-mail was ruining the world….oh god…
The AUT are on strike for two days this week and I’m iming to do the early shift on the picket line again. Despite being colder than a witches tit yesterday, we did a few hours of leafleting in the rain and snow. For the first time ever I went up to the rally and it was surprisingly inspiring. There were a couple of tough questions from one of the various “socialist” groups but the speakers handled it well. I’m of the opinion that dissent is essential in this sort of thing just to keep people questioning their beliefs. Even if it is always from the SWP or WRP.

Monday night Michele and I went out for a meal with Alex in a Lewisham restaurant that used to be quite good. It was a really good night, despite the meal costing 80 boody quid! How did that happen ? Anyway he has offered to let us rent his flat while he’s in Mexico which would be very cool. I hadn’t realised that he was going away so soon – scary stuff.

An interesting option has materialised as a result of collaring someone from the college on friday night and explaining our housing predicament. It seems there might be an option of renting a college owned flat! Fingers crossed.

Got up early on saturday to go to Eltham again. This time it was to bung 256M of RAM into Tina’s dad’s PC. You really can’t run windows for 2 years with only 64M. Seemed to do the trick, which is incredible considering I’ve been dragging that DIMM around in my bag for the last week in the rain, hail and beer.

Last night Michele and I broke with tradition and went out. Mod had invited us over for some food. On the rare occasions that we get an event in our social diary, 3 come at once. Within the space of 5 minutes, I spoke to her, Toby (who was back in London for 1 night) and Tony (likewise). We ended up goin with Tony over to Mods and it was great, but only seemed to last 10 minutes. In planning our journey we discovered that far from being a right bollocks to get to, Streatham is actually a simple, painless 20 minute train journey from New Cross Gate. Of course we discover this just as Mod is about to move out. Arses. Michele, Ian, Tony, Theresa and I were served some luxury, poshs bangers and mash. This wasn’t Walls and Smash in Bisto either (although I like that too). A selection of posh sausages, two types of mash including cheesy, and superb caramelised onions in gravy. This was followed up with home made double ginger cake and cream. DAMN!

4:36 and I’m more awake than I have ever been in my entire life. Like an advert for pro-plus.

This is partly due to the news that the landlady does want to sell the flat so we have to move out. This is a real, gold-plated, hand numbered, certified authentic, 100%, bugger and does not aid restful sleep. We don’t want to rent. We don’t want to buy (in London). Even if we did want to buy we couldn’t get it sorted in 2 months.

So, the usual course of action to encourage the sandman to visit (these days they’re all casual contractors and just don’t care about quality) is to listen to a tape. But when you flip a cassette 3 times you have to concede defeat. Determined to get back to sleep (something doomed to failure) I switched on the World Service. The programme was some sort of surreal international equivalent of Nation Wide (showing my age there I know). First item – a New Zealand woman whose farm flooded and was rescued by a cow. Next, Rio and someone who is really into science and salsa. She spends her time preforming dances that convey scientific facts. This was followed by the Indian man whose car got stuck in reverse and so he now drives backwards everywhere and plans to drive to Pakistan in order to promote peace. Hang on – this must be a dream…surely I’ve fallen asleep and the cheese has got to work on my consciousness. Nope
Interviewer: “but driving backwards must give you neck ache doesn’t it ?”
Nutjob: “I do have pains in the neck – frequent pains in the neck – and I have had severe vomiting in past,”

WTF ? As you can surely see, there is now no question of sleep for the rest of the night…or maybe ever again…

And it truly was a bad day. Sadly, due to the open nature of this blog, I can’t tel you anything about it. In a nutshell, a good friend of mine, who has had severe mental health problems recently, lost his job and was the subject of a bunch of messages to our departmental mailing list by someone who is equally, if not more, mad. Very stressful.

How nice, after a day like today, to come home and be with my bat and my parrot.

The most important news is that Dave is getting married!

This link will take you to one of the most nausiating websites in existence, and I’m not talking about the Moonfruit Flash aspect of it – although that doesn’t help. It’s “The Official Website of the world’s first mini it girl”. Her name is Jade, and her mother is odious, leather-look, never-was, and one time shag of Jeffrey Archer: Sally Farmiloe (does a lodda good work for charidee, doesn’t like to talk about it). Her website is even more nausiating. Be sure to check the messageboard, sponsors page and “how did you hear about this site” quiz. As for “Loo time” it’s way beyond parody.

Been a nice few days after a messy Friday night. The Union had a valentines day do thing with a Britney Spears “tribute”. Her and her two dancers obviously take it all very seriously, and at 800 quid a night they probably should. We didn’t stay late and so missed the extravaganza but we did see them reherse. Strange, but that sort of turn could well be the real Britney or a computer generated hologram for all the difference it makes. I must have been pissed because I ended up dancing(no not to Brit), with Michele this time.
The next night Michele cooked up a special valentines day meal – STEAK, with oven baked tomatoes, asparagus and some posh salad. Perfect. Sunday was the usual routing – spent the day coding:

• vejotp got enhanced.
• www.fatsquirrel.org is now available in gloryless WAP. Haven’t got round to putting these bologs up yet in WAP but I doubt there’ll be many tears shed
• Designed a nice PHP class to provide my workplace (no longer will I mention its name) with a web based news service. I do like OOP. Although C++ can fuck right off…

Utterly pointless I’m sure you’ll agree, but if I could spend my life engaged in such pointless work, you would never hear me complain. Donations welcome.

In the evening we went over to my mum and dad’s. My dad had done a CD copy of a superb blues compilation and I returned the favour by lending him my slapp happy CD 🙂 My sister was there and was in better spirits which is good. She had some really, really crap photos of her trip to Prague but it looked every bit as beautiful as I remembered. A good night tho’.

Isn’t it odd that despite being surrounded by banks that, according to their advertising, are friendly, different, listening banks that put the customer first,
they all seem to treat us like pubes in custard. Isn’t it a shame that the same marketing company that were responsible for “Death” fags don’t get hired by the
banks ? The first time I see an advert for a bank that says “We’re into making money and you can help us, at your own cost. Possibly even your own life.” I’ll sign up for their special low interest account immediately, confident that they’ll never betray my ill-founded trust.

Unlike SMILE. Yes, smiley smile, the different bank. The friendly, human bank with whimsical quizzes on their web site. The spin off from the co-op that don’t have to bother living up to all the ethical stuff.
With a chuckle still in my heart after reading the hilarious, cynical quiz on the front page of smile’s website today I phoned them asking to transfer
some money from the credit card to my current account so that I can pay the lovely tax bill. The, very helpful, sympathetic and underpaid lady I spoke to told me that smile, couldn’t do it because they’d decided to cancel my credit card without telling me.

Well anyway, she was nice enough to re-enable it and sort me out. She was human and therefore the enemy of the bank.

So I went to the Wxxxxxx arms with Peter B. It’s still one of the only proper pubs left and despite the newly aquired slightly threatening atmosphere, aided by
the landlords incredible resemblence to “dodgy” dave courtney, it’s still refreshingly comfy and pubby. Only in a real pub could you overhear a conversation lik
e this:

“Feta. That Greek cheese, you can get it in great big blocks”
“yeah it’s about fucking 3 or 4 quid for a little block”
“Yeah”
“You wouldn’t catch me eating that shit. Fuck that! Nah, I picked up a
lump a cheese. Massive, like that. Fucking massive, proper cheese. Cheddar.
Massive lump of cheese, that big right….3 quid.”
“3 quid?”
“3 quid.”
“Massive. I cut the cunt in ‘alf and give it to me sister.”

A good week really, despite Saturday. Most of Saturday was spent in Lewisham hospital with a friend who was in a bad way. On sunday things improved; Abby brough
t Jake round and we went for a walk on Hilly fields. Michele and I went over to my mum and dads’ afterwards and had a superb lump of lamb. Tina also came over and we all drank too much and chatted. Good stuff, although I needed to take monday off because the weekend was just too short. Weekends should be 5 days long.

In case you haven’t seen that diabolical filth that Apple and Pepsi (as bad as it sounds) crapped out during the superbowl, you can see it on their website. Dead kennedys did a version of that tune where the lyrics were “I fought the law and I won”. Twatty college limp-wristed rock lamers Green Day are now destined to burn alongside Lars Ulrich, Dr Dre, Britney Spears, MC Hammer and westlife in Satans post-vindaloo arse of fire.

Anyway, last night I went to the launch of the London news review at the Limelight, with Mod, Zap and Mod’s friend Theresa. A great night. It must have been good because I danced..a lot and didn’t get back until about 3am. We were expecting a few celebs there but the most famous person any of us saw was Dave Gorman…

It seems I’m not the only one who was outraged by the recent Government lies. Quite a few people turned up outside downing street yesterday to protest, and to burn the Hutton report. You probably didn’t know about this because a sudden, non-specific “terror” alert was published which dominated the news. I don’t blame people for being worried tho’ – this time there was a suspected link with Al-Quaeda and everything. Could have been spetember 11th all over again and we must be vigilant musn’t we ? Freedom is slavery after all.

I went with Alex and we stood in the rain and shouted a lot. After a walk to some record shops we went to a pub and met up with Zap and Ana. Nice day.

Later on I went in search of a Slapp Happy album, following a recent mini-obsession with them on the basis of hearing 1 track and reading loads of fan sites. Eventually Tower Records provided a double album for £8.99 and so I snapped it up. First CD I’ve bought for years. I thought back to being 15 and going to Groove Records in Greek Street. If someone had told me then, as I walked out with a brand new Steady B album, that in 18 years time I’d be getting just as excited about buying a CD of an early 70s German pop band…I would probably have jumped in front of a bus.

It’s been quite a week for obsessions. Slapp Happy…now almost sated. Then there was my little Java project. Last week I had an idea for a Java Midlet (applet for a mobile phone) that would generate one-time-passwords. So I spent a while writing one..and it works! Almost totally pointless in this day and age but still. Tax return – this has been an obsession for about six months. And this week I submitted it! So I’m in need of something new to be obsessed with – postcards please.

Sorry – I can’t let this one go past without sticking my oar in. You see, the difference between this and the run of the mill government whitewashes of yesteryear is that we saw the inquiry and had full access to the evidence. Like with an Agatha Christy novel we could all play detective and try to work out whodunnit. However in this case the evidence was so stark that you wouldn’t need the uncanny skills of Mrs Marple or Hercule Poirot to work out that of course the government lied. Every pundit, journalist and bystander was waiting patiently for Blair to get a right pasting and, surprise surprise, Hutton paints a halo on him and attacks the BBC ? Even ITV sounded shocked about the outcome. It’s a sad state of affairs when the only person on the news who seems to share my anger about the whole shabang is Boris fucking Johnson.
So Gred Dyke resigns, and his employees come out in protest. If my boss were to resign I don’t think we could muster a demonstration against it, and that’s not because no-likes this person, but you’d have to feel pretty strongly about it to consider standing out in the cold waving banners. And it is really, bloody cold today.
There’s a protest tomorrow outside Downing street.
For the record, here’s what I think went on…call me a conspiracy theorist if you like, that just demonstrates you don’t like questionning what you are told.
Hutton starts writing his report. As a government patsy he makes the government out to be not as tarnished as they should be. Meanwhile No 10, MI5 and MI6 are terrified that they are going to be revealed as even slightly questionable at a time when public confidence is already dangerously low. So, a couple of very senior intelligence officers approach Hutton in some posh London club, and gently “encourage” him to change tack…in the name of the Queen…for the defence of the realm…to protect the constiturion…for ENGLAND…etc etc..you know…that sort of MI5 bollocks they always say. So he tears up his original attempt and writes a long love letter to those bastards in No 10 and follows up by sticking pins into tiny dolls of Greg Dyke and John Humphries. You couldn’t make it up.