A couple of nights ago I had a bizarre dream that I feel should be documented for…well because it should.
Philadelphia. Michele, her mum and I travelled to an animal sanctury on the other side of town. We went via this sky-train thing. Like a roller coaster, but thousands of feet off the ground and with no visible means of support. You are only prevented from falling out by holding on for dear-life. It goes like the clappers and at all kinds of nasty angles so that you spend the entire journey on the brink of death. Everyone else seemed to be ok with it, and even found it exciting but I was terrified, and the more scared I got, the sweattier hy hands became and the more likely I was to fall out. Thankfully the track started to get closer to the ground and it was obvious we were nearly at our journey’s end – despite the speed steadily increasing. It took about an hour of this sphincter-clenching before we got there mind you .

We went into the animal sanctury, in the grounds of a large house and immediately I saw a six foot tall yellow parrot-looking thing. When I evntually got over to him, it turned out to be a half-human-half-parrot called “Mustard”. We chatted and he started to reveal himself as a really thoughtful, sad character who just wanted a relationship with someone and found his beak usually got in the way…people didn’t take him seriously. It even made me cry. Poor Mustard.
As the day went on, the place started transforming itself into a sort of festival. Bands arrived, tents were erected. Mark and Jon (from the helpdesk) even turned up with their camping gear. Of course, I couldn’t stay because I had work the next day and had to fly back to England. Michele was really mean about it and suggested I go back on my own so that she could stay and have fun.
The dream went on in the same sort of fashion – the fear of having to get on the skytrain thing to get to the airport – meeting a couple in town who I took back to the festival – missing michele etc etc….er that’s it really…

It’s only in the past few months that I’ve come to realise how similar rap, punk, blues, reggae and country and western are. Of course you’ll think I’m talking shit. But these are all types of folk music. Music made famous not by record companies, but by being passed on. No-one is pushing it at the moment, but I defy you to find someone aged 20-40 in the western world who hasn’t heard at least one of “God save the queen”, “Don’t believe the hype”, and “a boy named sue”. Ok you can probably find one or two – but I bet they own a Brittney spears record or two.

Tonight Michele and I took my mum and dad to an eatery in Deptford called “Kaya House” that I’ve probably talked bologs about before. A superb meal that, due to the massive amounts of chilli, garlic and ginger, made me feel a lot more healthy. They came back to ours, appreciated Humphrey and generally made it a good night. Good night.

En route to Dorking yesterday Michele noticed the best piece of graffiti in the whole world, on the wall at St John’s Station. It says “There r 2 things I love. One is graffiti, the other is PC Spencer’s wife”. Now that’s art.
It was a great day in all, ruined at the last knockings by the determination of South Central to piss as many people off as possible. How difficult is it to get from Dorking to south-east london after 5pm ? Bloody. That’s how difficult. A long string of train changes coupled with excruciating delays between connections and being forced to visit places I’ve never been nor ever desired to go. Norwood Juction my arse.
By co-incidence, on returning home I stumbled upon an old video tape of a BBC 4 documentary on the Baader Meinhoff group and suddenly everything clicked into place: the solution to all of the world’s problems. All we need to do is get a bunch of anarchist snipers with high velocity rifles, and systematically pick off the directors and major shareholders of every large company in the world. Suddenly they will start to deserve every penny of their filthy salaries. Forget attacking governments – not only is it much more difficult to assasinate George Bush and Tony Blair, the real power is with the shadowy suits on the boards of governers.
You’ll never get a head shot at Rupert Murdoch, but a few of the senior directors desks sprayed with brains would seriously affect the foundations of News International.

Running a company really would become a responsible job. Either resign and get a job on the front-line or run the risk of having your brains blown out! I’m even happy to start the ball rolling with the directors of Connex and South Central – fix up your service or make sure your cars and houses are equipped with bullet-proof glass.
How more satisfying it would make the average commuter journey if you knew that all of the delays, overcrowding and misery would evertually be paid for by the directors.

Obviously if someone came along and offered to run a corporation for a reasonable wage and for the benefit of the public we could spare their lives…until they sell out. A sort of incentive scheme if you like.

Yes maybe I need a holiday.

Are people who live in Dorking called Dorks ?

Yes Christina Aguilera. It’s just that one song: Beautiful. Honest. I don’t know why – I just love it. My sister should listen to it.
Well Mod and Ian, I’m sorry I blew you out today (ooh err and so forth). Last night I rang my parents and Stella told me she’d already started defrosting the lamb – so a curry was out. I really fancied Brick Lane too – I promise I’ll be less crap from now on. It’s not just because I didn’t relish the idea of my parents wasting a lump of perfectly good lamb – it was also because I fucking love roast lamb – and it was so, so good. Really muttony – just how I like it.

During the day we went to the Brockley Nature reserve open-day. Many people don’t realise that Brockley has a nature reserve – even fewer know it has two. We went to the larger one, off Vesta road by the railway embankment. It was the usual collection of well-meaning middle class people with their kids, making tea for everyone, organising nature trails for the kids and generally being nice. I loved it 🙂
Just as you thought it couldn’t get more middle-class, the acapella band turned up and did a turn. Despite what it sounds like, they were surprisingly entertaining. Michele and I sat in the “main glade” with all of the other local Guardian readers and their offspring, who were much more interested in doing the nature-trail than listening to singing… One of the blokes was wearing a home-made CRASS t-shirt 🙂
All in all a very enjoyable weekend and I even got some time to put up some pics of Humphrey and an arty-remix of Brodie’s birthday.
Work tomorrow doesnt even seem that bad – I might take half the day off and go down to Dorking 🙂

Why it’s taken me so long to find MLDonkey I don’t know – but what a find. It’s a P2P filesharing client that can talk to all the major networks including Gnutella (Limewire etc), Fasttrack (Kazaa etc), Direct Connect (DC) and…that type of thing. What I love most about it is that it isn’t just a graphical app – it runs as a daemon. You can control it through a telnet interface, or a web interface or a GTK-based GUI front end. So even if you close the GUI (or it bombs) the downloads continue. There’s a nice MacOS X port too. I’m still not sure how they got FastTrack support into it – last I heard it was pretty closed.

Oh yes, and as if this wasn’t geeky enough, I’ve been running a HAL9000 screen saver on the iBook.

James, probably the most clearheaded person(against all odds)in any university computer science department; the man who renamed the Computing department as “the department of Internet Shopping”, came out with the all time classic on friday. We persuaded him to come down the pub for lunch and he explained that it was the Computing Department’s graduation day and, in his own words, “I didn’t want to go to the ceremony because it would legitamise the farce”. You’re a fucking poet James.

In fact Friday was a top day. Not only was it Rakesh’s birthday, but Suzanne, Brodie, Charlie, Colin and the Sun also came out to play – in addition to the “regulars”. After the after-work drink I went back to Colin’s to hear some of the tunes he’s been doing. Despite feeling a bit like a turd in a casserole with his wife wanting him to spend more time with kid, we got a chance to listen to some of his most excellent tunes, have a j and generally get moist over his collection of studio equipment. He also introduced me to some sounds that as a fat 30-something-saddo I didn’t know about – including Adam Freeland. Mr Freeland is playing at the Brick lane festival tomorrow but I think we’re going to the Brockley Nature reserve open day instead…

This whole week wasn’t too bad. I’d taken monday off (for headspace) and yet again ended up working…although it was quite good: a business meeting the people with whom I’m working on the “wine site for experts”. Not only was it pretty productive, but we sunk a few in a nice pub on TCR. And the sun was out. Another evening Michele and I went out with Roland, and his brother and brother’s girlfriend. Roland is due to move back to germany, which is great for him, but quite sad for those that will miss him. I took them on the standard and tedious guided tour from the Gypsy Moth to the Cutty Sark. My chips were well and truly pissed-on by the fact that the path has now been blocked by yet another cynical river-side housing cash-cow. Bastards. We had to go right out of the way… nonetheless we did get a couple of rounds in and enjoyed a nice riverside drink, which brought back memories of doing the same thing, at the same place 15 years ago.

Today was very domesticated, which is no bad thing. Humphrey climbed up his new setee-ladder a couple of times to see me, raised his wings for us on demand and generally sat around being cute. Pictures coming. There’s more I’m sure…but i can’t think of it now. Tomorrow maybe. The French Connection’s on now….

Almost forgot – Michele’s Gran, Dot, proved herself to be the total hero we all thought she was. She gave someone (who really needed some home-truths) some home-truths. She is possibly the coolest woman in the northern hemisphere. She needs recognition from the U.N.

Dan was kind enough to lend me the film “Friday” which, like so many films, I should already have seen. It was pretty funny but chickened out in the end and turned all hood and that. Pity. I’d still tell people to go out and see it , if only for the first half hour which caused me to change my underpants with laughter….or maybe it was the stomach complaint with which batly and myself have been suffering. In the words of Frank Hovis, “one good cough and you get all sorts of trouble.”

Anyway – Friday night was the usual after-work drink with the exception of Ian who was ill for the past couple of days…I’m betting he’ll be back to work with a black-eye again on monday 🙂 It ended up with Dave H, Zap and Roz. Roz had written her car off that day so wasn’t in the best of moods. So we spent a long time trying to persuade her that this was a good thing….by lying basically. On reflection I actually think it may be a good thing – she’s moving away from London, her job and a history with some twatty boyfriend who fucked her about. Why not leave the car behind too ?

Alistair Campbell resined as well. This makes me sad because he went out gracefully rather than going round the bend with a machine gun – he could have taken out the entire cabinet if he’d thought about it. I have even less respect for him now.

Saturday was a beautiful day – very cold and very sunny. I couldn’t contain myself and so went up town to wander about and sit in a couple of pubs. Such a good way to spend a saturday even if you don’t find any open wireless networks. Bah! Nonetheless it did wonders for my spirit such as I have one. That night we watched Friday and then Copenhagen; a play about Neils Bohr and Mr Heisenburg(sp?) meeting in 1941. I’m not sure what message the author intended us to take away from the latter, but for me it seemed to suggest that western europe could well now be a pile of ash if Neils Bohr had controlled his anger…all the more reason to feel smug about being argumentative and stroppy.

This evening we had another gastronomic evening at my parents and learned more about how cool the extended family was.

“Regrets and omissions Carter….regrets and omissions.”
Uncle Mort

Chris asked me if I could copy a copy-protected CD and, without thinking, I told him I could… There are loads of ways to copy
-protect CDs – all of them CRAP. This one is particularly crap….mangling checksums. You lame wankers….Hear me now:

Don’t buy copy protected CDs

They are broken. You are buying damaged goods – this is your reward for playing by the rules. They have contempt for you, and you repay them by buying their broken CDs. Don’t do it. The only people copyrights hurt are the real fans. If you want to support a musician, band or sound system then send them cheques – buy their t-shirts – go to see them live. They get more of your money that way. If you buy CDs the artist gets about 1%, and you buy bastardised goods. Of course I can copy it. The real pirates can copy it too – with no bother. The only people that can’t are the legitimate purchasers. Don’t help the record companies out – they hate you.

Well the same parrot in fact, but I thought it sounded good. It was an ordinary day at work, but quite enjoyable. I did some tedious systemsy type stuff, had lunch with Dan, Adele and Stuart, set up a webcam, and then came home for a pleasant evening with Michele and Humph. As the telly was so crap I watched the second half of two films that I taped recently; South Park and Bugsy Malone. A recipe for a good night in. I’m only sad that 3000 miles away there is unnecessary domestic touble brewing as a result of someone being dissatisfied with himself and taking it out on his loved-ones….

The four-day weekend was very uneventful, but not bad as a result. There was lots of quality bat-and-parrot-time. OK, I have to admit I suffered quite a few periods of despair – but I’m used to that, it’s this life thing…man. But the joy of watching Humphrey perform his experiments around the room and climb on our laps is enough to shatter the lowest of the low feelings. Despite owning a shop-bought copy of Paulie, we both watched it together on the bank holiday and bawled our eyes out. Whilst watching we also ordered the DVD from Amazon in the hope that it would contain extra features. You are only allowed to take the
piss out of me for crying at a children’s film about parrots if you’ve seen it. If you haven’t then belt up – if you have then you will be nodding whimsically with tears welling up in your eyes as you read this.

Frances (my sister) came up from Plymouth over the weekend. After a superb meal of grilled salmon in lovely sauce with…god what are those vegetables called – long thin green things – make your pee smell like a tyre fire….oh god – you know…not artichokes…..Google, Google, Google: ASPARIGUS! with posh salad at my mum and dad’s she came over to stay at ours so she could spend some time with Humph. Apart from me (not us…just me) scaring Humphrey by jogging his table while he was asleep [….leading to him trying to fly in his cage and losing three feathers….which had blood on the ends…which made me want to kill myself, but he was fine and even more friendly than ever – I don’t think he was hurt…oh dear] I really enjoyed her being here. We stayed up talking about her current situation in life and laughing about stupid stuff. The next day Chris took us both to Sidcup meadows for a bracing walk – what an effect that had on me – exposure to nature, no matter how small, does wonders for the constitution you know. If you’re feeling glum stick a finger up your bum go for a walk near some grass. Those nature vibes are good for you man. Hopefully my sister’s life is about to take a turn for the enjoyable – she deserves it.

Tuesday – back to work. It was actually quite nice. Partly because I had the best night’s sleep for months on monday night – christ knows why. Jay in the Spar also had a great sleep; must be the air in Lewisham. Nice lunch with Dave, Ian, Dan and Zap. Short meeting with Johnny Edgar and just niceness.

After work I went for a swifty with Dave, Dan and Zap. Michele came down and the she took me for a walk down to “Pets At Home ™(R)” to look at the parrots. The plan was to oggle them, whistle, generally work ourselves up into an excited appetite and then go to Gastro Gastro for dinner. What a great plan it was too, except for one thing: it turns out Gastro Gastro has packed up. Such a pity. OK it was expensive but what great food and what nice people. It was run, staffed and patronised by nice people. R.I P.

Instead Michele and I went down to “Kaya House” and had a toothsome banquet of exquisite Malaysian food. How can a place be so out of place ? No wonder you have to book on a tuesday night to get a seat but why the hell is it on Deptford broadway ? 13 years they’ve been there, and not only is the food superb, but it’s managed to develop an atmosphere….they need a community award.

Michele had asked her e-mates on birdboard.com (or whatever it’s called) if Humph is greeting us when he raises his wings….they said “yes”…and asked us if he wiggles his tail. On returning from the restaurant he did both and confirmed to us that he must love us….which is good to know, especially considering the amount of love we have for him. Yes I’m talking about a parrot.
All in all a lovely evening that reminded me about what life is about. And so, with a final swig of red wine, to bed.