The 436 bus, around these parts, is commonly known as “the free bus”. This is because of the revolutionary system uncle Ken has introduced where you buy a ticket before you get on and then no-one checks it. Consequently no-one ever bothers and just gets on and off at will. This system radically speeds up the buses as they don’t have to wait for everyone to pay, and radically reduces the cost to the consumer by being free. Brilliant!
On the way home from the union tonight, I started to question the morality of fare dodging and came to the conclusion that it was totally justified and that I have nothing to lose sleep over. Disagree ? Let me know.

Now the sun is over the yardarm, I’m enjoying a glass of vino collapso while Michele drifts in and out of the room, and Humph drifts in and out of his sleep. It seems like a good time to list some media that is currently on my mind:

• SPACED series 2 DVD – the only problem with buying this is that now I have to buy the series 1 DVD, even though I’ve got the video.
• Dude – Where’s My Country – Michael Moore. Chapter 1 is pretty damn good anyway. Half price from Amazon you know. Spent an hour this afternoon in bed reading it.
• Heroes of Comedy – Leonard Rossiter
  On now and a great tribute to someone who made me laugh a lot as I was growing up
• TV Ark
  which has loads of archive TV stuff including old adverts. Watch out – there’s a Humphrey about.
• Bill Hicks – Sane Man
  The best Bill Hicks video out there. If you like Bill, you must see this – in front of an American audience he really gets angry – the less the appreciate it the better he gets.
• Bill Hicks – Rant in E minor
  A compilation of a lot American stuff – another classic

Every day at work I get to fix a random selection of problems from an ever expanding set of potential problems. It’s bloody frustrating knowing that after fixing a problem, it will only be a matter of days weeks or months before it needs fixing again. Some of them could be fixed “properly” with an investment in hardware, time or interest; none of which we can spare. Others are just caused by bogons that occur too infrequently to discover what’s causing them. It’s like the pressure loss in a central heating system. No-one knows what causes them to loose pressure, but as long as it doesn’t need filling up more than once a month no-one’s going to be bothered/able to find out what’s wrong. Without wanting to extend this dodgy metaphor to new-Labour levels: I have to run about 30 similar central heating systems at the same time.

Tensions in the department are high, mainly due to management; not that it’s bad, it just doesn’t exist. As people get more uptight and stressed, they take it out on the people with whom they work, and the vicious circle continues to turn. I’m just as guilty as anyone for loosing my temper, but it’s hard not to.

Anyway, on thursday evening I went to Brighton straight from work – Ben had got a couple of tickets for Mark Steele doing stand up. It’s been many, many years since I’d seen him live and I remember thinking he was brilliant. Well it’s been a long time since I belly laughed as much as that – superb. After the gig, we had a few pints in the pub and went back to Ben’s where he managed to make a gourmet quality meal of bangers and mash. I wish I ever had the energy and talent to knock up a really together meal like that…at midnight…when half cut. I drifted off to sleep watching a rare Bill Hicks video. A Satiritastic evening.

Friday morning, Ben was ill and so didn’t go into work. We started the day slowly and comfortably – tea, more Bill Hicks and a couple of Trisha lie detector results. After this I walked along the sea front and up to the station, stopping breafly at “Bites Cafe” for an egg and bacon sandwich. The weather was absolutely perfect; just how I would have it every day: very bright, cold and not a cloud in sight. I don’t care what anyone says, autumn is the most beautiful time of the year.

From Brighton I went up to Dorking. Adele, her sister, and Stuart had brought Peter down to see his dad. So Brodie went out and bought a massive pedal-power JCB-type-tractor thing and Peter nearly exploded with excitement. Later on, Fino turned up from Wolverhampton and we all had a good day. For weeks now I’ve been working on a picture for the wall of the pub and the day before I’d managed to get it printed out so was able to present it, framed. Printed on that high quality photo paper it really did look good. I also managed to get Brodie’s PC together at last and hook him up to the Internet which provided enough smugness for me to not worry about spending the day in a pub.
But, it was very knackering,I fell asleep on the train and had to be woken up when we hit Waterloo. By Lewisham I was dead and spent the best part of 5 bloody quid on a black cab from the station…worth every penny. I just wanted to fall into bed, but Humphrey had other plans for us.

When I got in he was very pleased to have the full complement of his flock back in the house and so when I left the room he tried to fly after me. Sadly, due to lack of experience, he’s a really, really crap flyer. He ended up on the curtain rail. To cut a long story short we both slept on the floor of living room…with the light on.. in case he tried to come down in the night and hurt himself. Every hour or so the discomfort of our landlady-fitted parquet flooring, coupled with the fact that light was on, woke us up and we spend some time calling him and making bird noises.

We didn’t manage to get him down until late this morning. I had to get the step ladder out and coax him down. Even then it took three or four goes before he actually got down. One time I got him perched on his food bucket and halfway down the ladder when he panicked and flapped off…straight back up to the rail…pillock. He really wanted to come down but was just so scared – I don’t think he managed to sleep last night. Anyway now he’s back down and sleeping on one leg while I end up doing a bunch of work that I didn’t do on Friday and seemingly no-one else there could do. God how irritating….

Last night I had a long dream that involved firing a handgun and an UZI pistol at lots of fascists. Sadly, and despite hitting quite a few of them, I didn’t manage to kill or injure any of them.

So imagine my delight today when I discover, quite accidentally, that the original Fascist, Mussolini, was shot exactly 26 years to the day of my birthday! This site provided the answers.

One one side of our house we have a student house. We know the young adults that live there are students, not because we have spoken to them (this is London), but because the front bedroom has a Betty Blue poster, right next to a Radiohead poster. Bloody shtewdents.
Last night they apparently had a party. Being wacky funsters it was apparently an “80s” party which meant lots of really, really shit music all night. However that didn’t piss us off. Apparently there were lots of people there. Not a problem either. However, as the evening went on it became evident that this was in fact the annual Lewisham Morons Convention. All night long, delegates from the convention wandered out of the house, into the street and shouted to each other in an attempt to win the “South East London Biggest, Most Annyoing Moron” competition. A very inventive set of entries this year:

• Wretching Girl: Wandered down to our front step and tried to puke as loudly and bizarrely as possible. Michele’s comment through the window: “Ooh That’s attractive”.
• Random Name shouter: Stood in the middle of the road and repeatedly shouted “Dan” about 50 or 60 times. After this he switched to “Mike”.
• Cab girl: Cab girl wandered down to outside our bedroom window to call her and her dim mates a cab. Being a sharp-minded student she realised that she must first find a cab number so rang 40 or 50 different numbers in an attempt to find a service hat could provide her with a number. Each time she used a phone-voice:
  “Oh…you’re going to text me the number ? Oh cool – he’s going to text me the number. OK so you’ll text me the number ? Cool! He said he’s going to text me the number”. The number arrives with a loud SMS ringtone.
  “Hello can I order a cab please…oh…where are we again ?”

• Mark.
  Mark was our favourite. At about 5am he turned up and spent half an hour knocking on our front door. Quietly, but persistently. At first we assumed it was for the downstairs flat, but there was no answer. After Michele couldn’t take it any more she stormed over to the window and yelled “WHO IS THAT!”. Mark was bewildered by the disembodied voice and did his best impression of a dog looking for where the whistle was coming from. “UP HERE!” yelled Michele helpfully. “Oh…it’s Mark” he said unhelpfully. His voice sounded like he had just woken up from a 100 years sleep. “Are you looking for the party ?”
  “Yes”
  “Next door mate!”.
  “Oh…sorry”
  By this time I’d woken up and asked michele who was outside – “Some DICKHEAD” she shouted.

Confusing. A dark house with 102 on the door, right next to the illuminated house with 104 on the door. which one is the party at 104 in ?
Today Michele drew a picture of Mark to illustrate what a moron he looked.

Humphrey has continued to be very loveable. Last night he climbed up my leg, up my t-shirt and onto the top of my arm. This followed a dream I had the previous night where he climbed onto my shoulder. I nearly cried! This morning he did he same.
He’s been squawking a lot – someone on one of Michele’s birdy boards suggesed that this may because Humphrey might actually be Humphrette…and about to lay some eggs. Eeek.

Anyway I plan to do some Java this weekend. Earlier in the week Suzanne managed to blag 3 6310i phones from Pat W*** in return for unlocking a boxload of old phones. I was lucky enough to be given one; my first pocket Java machine! Certainly not the coolest phone in the world, but it has a high hack value.Yesterday I wrote my first mobile Java MIDlet – very, very uninteresting but I got excited.

This week there have been at least two programmes on the BBC concerned with Guantanamo Bay. This is, as any right-thinking patriot knows, because the BBC is run by communists and is therefore biased and anti-American. I can’t imagine either programme being shown on mainstream US TV…despite the fact that one programme was actually American. Rupert Murdoch, Ted Turner and Wanker Bush are far too patriotic to allow such filth to be shown to the general population. They need protecting from the evil anti-american lies you see. Obviously they aren’t capable of disinguishing fact from fiction so the U.S. government has graciously taken on the onerous task of filtering what the people can be exposed to. Much like they used to do in the USSR, Nazi Germany and Iraq before they were all “liberated”. The difference is that whilst the American people are being sheilded from these bad thoughts, they are all Free(tm).

Anyway – two interesting things came out of these programmes; one I already suspected, the other I would never have guessed.

1. Camp Delta is essentially a concentration camp. The inmates are tortured and are being kept without trial or any rights – even constitutional rights.
2. The CIA routinely send certain classes of prisoner to Syria – yes, Syria – to be “interrogated”. As you may know – Syria is part of the axis of evil. This is because they have a regime that does bad things…like torture people using methods so inhumane that no respectible country would consider using them.

So why would the CIA contract out interrogation to Syria ? It certainly is a poser isn’t it ?

Ah, lovely chai – what a nice way to start the day.
Humphrey has got into the habit of squawking before his covers are off in the morning – this is a bad habit and I’m doing my best to ignore him. Not easy considering how nice he’s been recently – the other night he did his usual trick of waddling over to where I was sitting, and hopping up onto the ibook keyboard, preventing me typing. He then pecks at the keys until I give him either some attention or some seeds…the latter provides the perfect way for him to cover the keyboard in bits and dust…this time though, he decided to hop up on my leg and wander around my lap, looking up at me. As Michele would say, “What a sweetie”.

On tuesday, we went over to say happy birthday to my mum. They’d had the idea of having a kebab and it was a great evening. While Chris was ordering the food, I went up to the pub to get a couple of pints in. I know it’s a Wetherspoon’s but 3.75 for 3 pints really took my breath away. I had to ask if the barmaid had undercharged me – she hadn’t.

When we got home, and after the aforementioned touching Humphrey moment, I watched an hour and half of superb telly on BBC4. The first hour was probably one of the most intense, un-nerving and stressful things of seen for years. It was a JG Ballard play called “home”, about a suburban man who decides to perferom an experiment that involves not ever leaving the house again. Needless to say it’s a trip down the path to madness and it was done so well. By the end you were just sitting there, all tensed up and uncomfortable as he ate the local cats and dogs, dicovered the attic had become infinitely large and murdered the Sky TV engineer (an nice cameo from Keith Allen btw).
From the point of view of Mark Steel (who presented the following programme) I doubt you could get a more deadly warm-up act. But it was still excellent.

Can any Labour Party member who watched “The Key” on BBC2 tonight really feel comfortable about giving Tony Blair anything more than a rasberry and a rude gesture (let alone a standing ovation) at the conference today? I’d be fascinated to hear from someone who still think’s he’s any better than a piece of canine-egested chewing-gum one might discover on the soul of a shoe. He’s either a complete moron, or the second most evil man on the planet (Bush takes some beating).

Michele did her first day at Southwark college today. Last night, in bed, we talked about the nightmare of the first day at a new job – especially in F.E. Michele’s fears of the stress derived from the general chaotic, disorganised mess of FE, together with the terrifying set of cliches, crap jokes and awkward first-day conversations provided enough for us to laugh ourselves to sleep. Some examples of the hilarious witticisms we predicted include:

• You must be mad wanting to work here
• Welcome to the madhouse!
• Congratulations…or should I say commiserations!!!!!!!!! (too many exclamation marks deliberate)
• You must be a glutton for punishment!!!
• We’re all mad here!!!!

and so forth.

Went to Dorking wih Colin yesterday. Most excellent. As much as I hate Connex, South-Central have moved up to first place on my hitlist. At least there was a pub opposite Sutton station. And Dorking station.

As Michele watches “American Pie” and I sip my £1.99 Tesco screw-top red wine, life seems quite pleasurable. We’ve just got back from my mum and dad’s where we ate way too much roast beef…which was more delicious than you can imagine. We also got a chance to play the vinyl I bought from the charity shop on saturday: several 7-inch singles (Lene Lovich, Jona Lewie, Pig Bag and Ruthless Rap assassins) and a Boney M album (including Rasputin, Brown Girl in the Ring, By the Rivers of Babylon and Painter Man). All good stuff, but best of all I’ve taken tomorrow off work. I might go down to Dorking, and I might not. I might stay at home and do some music. I might not. I might just spend the whole day on the bog. Whatever I decide it won’t be work.

Just for the record, here is a summary of recent dreams – for my own benefit apart from anything else.

I asked some ropey looking slappers in a pub if they wouldn’t mind moving because they were sitting in the seats belonging to an elderly lady and her daughter, who had gone to the loo. They gave me a mouthful of abuse and called over some bubble-haired scouser who asked me if I wanted a fight, and then pre-empted my response by kicking the shit out of me. That’s all that I can remember out that – apart from going back the next day to face up to the scouser, and chickening out and apologising.

Last night’s dream was another epic and the memory traces are beginning to weaken but this is what I remember.

We were on some sort of holiday. Me and a bunch of other people in their 20s and 30s. I didn’t really know them too well. One girl, who I hung around with a lot, started to get a bit too keen. I reminded her I was married and she started crying and telling me she loved me. Nice as she was, I didn’t feeling anything for her but friendship, and also didn’t feel that anyone could really fall in love after knowing someone for about thee days and so I got angry and told her so. For the rest of the dream she didn’t talk to me and just gave me dirty looks. I tried to rectify matters but she just blanked me.

We were all staying in a huge, splendid mansion house for the first few days. At one point we had to move to another place in this nice looking little village by the sea. There was something about the drive there and taking blankets and stuff…hmm. In the village I, and some guy with whom I was sharing a hotel room, got on a local bus to the beach – which was really scary. Imagine Croyden on sea…or macclesfield sur mere. Everything looked grey, except the sand in the car-park which was “Tennents Super” blue. The beach was in a large semicircular cove formed by a low cliff, on top of which were nightmarish blocks of flats. Many very wide, and low-rise like 1960s tenements. There were several very tall, thin spikey looking concrete buildings with ‘arms’ that made them look like cactuses. In the dream someone told me that they were even called cactuses and designed to make the sandy beach look like a desert. It was sunny, but the light was so grey and depressing, like looking through grey polarised sunglasses. There were children playing and people in deckchairs, but no-one was smiling. We left and walked back to the village, which was, on further inspection, not quite as picturesque as it had first appeared. It had a run-down, menacing feel. We ended up in somone’s house with some people who were engaged in some sort of violent feud with a guy down the road. From this point on it because a gritty, complicated BBC-2 drama and involved lots of people getting killed by each other then revenge killings and us trying to stay safe.
Then I woke up.