Yesterday, deprived of IP in the am, Michele and I watched the two crappy music channels that Freeview managed to scrape out of the gutter. Normally these provoke gobbing at the tube; Britney, boybandz, Kylie ad nausiam. But we were lucky enough to get the few good tunes. The Streets- you’re fit but don’t u know it (read the bio – the guy *must* be alright), Scissor Sisters – Laura, and Jay-Z – 99 problems. OK, as “artists” they have all produced a lot of shit. But these particular tunes are all…”def”…as we used to say in my day 😉 And the vids all work. Makes me happy in a sad way.

Trying to face a weekend without IP was enough to keep me awake last night. As soon as I surfaced I got on to 151. Their automated service let me know that the problem we still had, had been resolved, so I phoned back. BTW – don’t bother with their convenient “call back” service – it sucks and is still slower than waiting on hold (hey it’s an 0800).

When I initially reported the fault, I cried down the phone and told the poor sod about how I was likely to commit suicide and take some people with me. Evidently he made a note on my record because when I called again, the woman I spoke to treated me like she was working for the samaritans. She even told me that “If I could personally climb telephone poles I would – I’m so sorry”. Not only that, but within 20 minutes we had an engineer here! On a saturday! The poor bastard ended up spending 2 hours tracing our line from the hole in the wall right back to the exchange using his little osc/amp setup. Every manhole inbetween had to be taken up and it turned out to be down to the engineer who installed the line in the first place…who forgot to tell the exchange that he’d re-routed the line to another pair…nice bloke, but what a twat.
However, I have to say that getting everything back in order within 2 hours of making a call really does make me feel better about the UK and really makes me want to give “Helen” in cutomer services a great big passionate kiss. Thanks Helen.

Once the saviour had got us all back up, Michele and I went to Moonbow Jakes in Brockley to see Alex…who is about to go to Mexico for ever and ever…I have to say that it was one of the best afternoons I’ve had for years. We got to meet lots of people who all turned out to be really sound, lovely people. Been a while since I met anyone who I really liked, and today there were fucking millions of them! Nice one Alex – we’re all going to miss you.

We got home, appreciated Humph, ordered a curry and then watched Abigail’s Party (as a result of an earlier conversation). What a piece of brilliance that play is. It gets more difficult to watch each time and yet every actor becomes more accurate. It brought back old memories – Stacey and Ash – please get in touch – I miss you both.

Deja Vu! It took six fucking days to get our phone line switched on, despite the line being there already. We have a week of telephone service and then this morning – no dial tone. The helpful guy on 151 tells me it’s an exchange fault and they should be able to get it back up by monday…. MONDAY ?
WHAT?
My brain is in a troubled state at the moment and I’m clinging to any security blankets I can – ADSL is one of the few things that make me feel comfortable with the world. Sad, but true. Now, thanks to some fuckwit in our local exchange, we’ve got a “dry” weekend to look forward to. No working from home for me…nothing. I persuaded the guy to make it priority to limit the chances of me going postal.
As Michele said, it’s probably easier to get phone service in Iraq at the moment than to get a dial-tone with BT.

According to the propaganda, one of the reasons Blair and his lying, toadying, government were exonerated so fully from any blame in the Hutton report was “evidence” provided by the chair of the JIC: John Scarlett. He stood up and proudly lied through his teeth….for the good of the country of course. To understand how someone can lie so blatantly with such conviction you have to understand nationalism. I don’t, and I can’t, but I know enough about nationalists to know that they are simple lifeforms, who see life in very simple terms. Even faced with hard logical contradictions, thier adhesion to the simple rules of nationalism simplify such paradoxes. Just go with the option that appears to be more “patriotic”.
In the case of Captain John Scarlett it was easy. I can just imagine the meeting he will have had with the cabinet office and MI6:
C: Ah John – sorry about this but we need to talk to you about something of great importance….
Captain: You mean….ENGLAND ?
C: (Gravely) Yes. And her majesty’s government.
Captain: Her majesty ? Good god!
C: I’m afraid we’re going to have to ask you to lie about that bastard Kelly.
Captain: But Kelly was a fine man.
C: Remember…the security of ENGLAND is at stake…and Kelly was jeopardizing it.
Captain: England…I see. Well of course.
Cabinet-office-gopher: And we may be able to bung you a few bob too if you get Tony off the hook…

Instead of anything so crass as a bung in a brown envelope, the, very grateful, government have made him the new head of MI6.

Landlady.
After several days our previous landlady has been in touch with the bastards at the estate agents.Michele was surprised to hear she was unhappy with the state of the flat.I wasn’t.I look forward to her claim out of our deposit. We have already started planning the court case confident in the knowledge that we will win. Fuck you Camilla Fidelia Woollf (her real name) – I can only assume she is from aristocracy who have hit hard times….good. See you in court 🙂

The last blog was actually last night,but I only just got round to submitting it. Curse the space-bar on this keyboard – it needs at least 200 psi before it acknowledges being pressed.

Tonight was nice. A couple of pints of Guiness with Ian after work and then some wine back at our new flat. Humph wasso sweet and I suspect has a soft spot for Ian. Later on after Ian had left he decided to nest in my hair while I was at the computer.What an honour!

Again – time for bed. Happy birthday Ralph! Greetings to you all – especially Helen and Mike!

It’s been a while I know. But there are reasons. Firstly we didn’t have IP until very recently (it was hell).Secondly I have been through a very, very low period. There are many reasons for this that I don’t intend to go into but now we are in our new flat,things are beginning to look more normal.
Thirdly, I have actually written stuff but it’s a bit depressing and, to be honest, scares me when I read it.

So – starting afresh.

Had a birthday and it passed very quickly (thank god); I was asleep by 7pm.The Absinth I rejected turned up in a plastic glass, shoved between our window bars (basement flat in New Cross remember) with the words “you cannot escape the green goblin” scrawled on the side in eyeliner. I still have it, and how thanful I am that my brain was together enough to reject it at the time- despite allowing a tequila first…

BTW- there’s a mini supermarket along from New Cross station that sold me a tiramisu for 1.59 (UKP) that morning. Not only did this make a decent gift for the other Warmington slaves (a birthday tradition), but it was also one of the best Tiramisus I’ve ever tasted – second only to Tree’s, although in fairness hers was several orders of magnitude better…

Loads of other stuff went on recently that have provoked an emotional response, but I’ll discuss them later:

• Reading “The Funny Times” and realising that there are Americans out there who, rightly, feel more irritated with Wanker than anyone outside the country
• Seeing the predictible pictures of US and UK soldiers abusing Iraqis in a way that probably makes Saddam proud (P.S. despite what you might think, I don’t blame the soldiers….a topic for another time)
• The Space-bar going on this keyboard
• Blunkett storming ahead with the nextmove toward a police state

Goodnight

I can’t begin to describe how upset, sad, uptight and angry I feel about this move. Tomorrow is the big day and we’re almost ready….but not quite. I don’t want to move, especially not into Goldsmiths. It seems such a bad, retrograde step – despite the limited financial benefits. We’ve been planning to move to America for so long now, and moving into Surrey bloody House just doesn’t cut the mustard. We know it’s not permanant and so all the effort, sweat and panic, we know will happen again in the not too distant future. Horrible feeling.

So here we are, half-heartedly putting everything we can see into the nearest box (we’re way past trying to make the boxing logical). I know we’re about to be without ADSL for at least a fortnight and so blogging is going to be difficult. Shutting down “teapot” and packing he amp and speakers really made me feel unhappy. No music, and no broadband….I’d rather be without water. No I wouldn’t, I love water. But it’s still a scary thought. Oh well – atleat this lovely iBook + a crap 3com AP and a DSL modem can keep me happy for tonight…

Humph is totally confused by the whole deal – poor little sod. He has been so affectionate recently. He’s been spending most of his time outside the cage and sitting on us. He feels comfortable enough to sit on our shoulders these days which is an indescribable feeling. He just wants to be part of the flock.

Anyay, we’re spending 250 quid (we don’t own) on a removals firm tomorrow so hopefully they’ll sort us out and make life much easier.

Well of course, the letter I had been expecting has now arrived. From the landlady, preparing us for her trying to screw us out of our deposit. Apparently, part of the reason for her wanting us out was because we weren’t keeping the place in order…and she quoted the relevant part of the contract. However, we happen to know this is bollocks.
Firstly, she wants to sell the place. Secondly, we know she is planning some serious structural work. Thirdly she visited the place personally a year ago and has happily let us stay until now.

So – even if we vandalised the place (which we haven’t…yet), it wouldn’t matter because she’s planning to rip the joint apart. Her crappy effort at parquet flooring will have to be redone at least if she’s serious about selling the place.

No, we know what’s really going on. The row I had with Nora Batty’s mother-in-law, Sam, at the estate agents. She has clearly decided to try and dump us in it. Dogfaced, belligerent, loathsome, unpleasant, anhydrous, ungratified, dreary BITCH that, we believe, she is.

As you’d expect, I lost it when I read the letter. But I now realise that whatever happens we win. We don’t need the deposit for the new flat – obviously we need it for the normal debt reasons, but not for the new place. We will also win if we can be arsed taking it to court..because we are in the right; the place will be cleaner when we move out than it was when we moved in. Also, as tenants with a “periodic tenancy” we have fucking loads of rights. I might even demand all info Oak-lets have on us under the data protection act and then sue them for libel. Ahh, wouldn’t it be nice to have a go at using the law…I’m also slowly going bonkers and so care less than I ought about the practicalities of what I’m suggesting. I’d take months of work for this.

Last night, after a pleasant drink in the Rosey (Dave, Ian, Dan, Zap, Heather, Llynos, Paula, Pred etc) in the lovely new cross sunset, I got home, and sampled some of the the good doctor’s wares. Once Michele was satisfied that I was good and satisfied, she showed me the letter. I didn’t sleep. There’s this odd thing going on with my stomach – it feels like a family of birds are nesting there. My hair is also going grey. The night daemons explained to me in clear, rational, terms about how my debts work, how house moving works and how we’ll never be able to box everything up in time, and how we’re going to end up in the shit as a result of the landlady. I was also hungover. Even a couple of Anadin and several tapes of Jack Dee and Jeremy Hardy didn’t help. At 8:30 I started listening to radio 4. Funny how people like Jim Naughtie, John Humphries and Charlotte Green can seem like family. At 9am John Peel kicked-off his usual round of human-interest whimsey…and I love it. After stories about fatal anorexia, and then a mad woman who likes polkadots, came an ex-celebrity chef who is now homeless. This really woke me up and made me love her. She was fed up with moving house, due to landlords being landlords, so she now lives out of a suitcase with all her gear in storage. It was exactly what I wanted to hear, and inspired me to write to the programme in an attempt to get the malfeasance out of my head. It worked.

We spent the day boxing shit up and chucking shit out. One of the kids from down the road asked me what I was chucking out, and when I told him we were moving out he went and got his brother. He rushed over and told me and Michele it was a “shame” we were moving. Even though he’s only 8 years old I think he really likes Michele. It really made me realise how much I love this road, and how much I don’t want to leave it. This is the first road I’ve ever lived on that made me feel at home…
The flat itself can get stuffed however…

Iraq is surely Free(tm) now that it has Freedom Radio(R). Yes several hours a day of US establishment approved unthreatening sounds, including lots of RRRRRRRock with a small R. The Channel 4 special was quite astounding. On the Beeb we’re used to seeing films that are critical of the U.S. regime in Iraq. Many people choose to see this as evidence that the BBC is biased, without realising that in fact it’s evidence to the contrary. The BBC isn’t owned by Murdoch, Turner or any of the other over-rich bastards with financial interests in the ‘news’ they present. However, now that Bush is truly in the shit in his own country, the more conservative (small ‘c’) news gatherers are feeling more comfortable with broadcasting objective reports.
The groovy “FREEDOM(C) RADIO” DJ in her dress-down-friday style military uniform grinned as she extolled the virtues of having a truly FREE(P) station…just before she told us how she couldn’t play whetever she liked because the “higher authorities” decided what should be played….Doesn’t sounds very “FREE” to me. I imagine they don’t have too many phone ins then. But rest assured that Rockin’ Rumsfeld will have sorted out some of the deffest trax for the newly liberated Iraqis and occupying troops to funk to…only there’s no Country and Western, and no Hip-Hop. I’m sure all of the troops apprciate that. You can’t be free if you can choose to listen to EVIL music like that, that challenges the freedom all Americans and Brits have to sit down and shut the fuck up and just do what they’re fucking told by their government…

Yeah ok – enough. Still moving house, it’s still looking impossible only now we have an extra 50 carboard boxes we’re not touching while we worry about how much there is to do. This is how we spent our Easter. Because we’re atheists, God in his forgiving compassion, gave Michele a right shitty virus with which she is still suffering. He’s saving mine up until we actually move. Note to self – must remember to pray otherwise he won’t lift a bloody finger.

Other things I did over easter:

• See Andy and discuss making loads of money by doing groovy stuff…I’m ever the optimist as you know
• Watch “Jersey Girl”, “Spellbound”, “American Chai” and a load of “Chapelle’s Show”; the later was the first US comedy show for years to make me laugh out loud – go and watch it.
• Watch some borrowed DVDs (The Sweeney and Spaced)

That sort of thing.