Very Droll

A rare email from Dad:

As the silly season approaches, I thought that you cricketers might appreciate a Tommy Cooper joke plus a few more.

Guy goes into the doctor's. "Doc, I've got a cricket ball stuck up
my backside."
"How's that?"
"Don't you start."

What do you call a fish with no eyes?
A fsh.

Two fat blokes in a pub, one says to the other "Your round.". The
other one says "So are you, you fat bast**d!"

Police arrested two kids yesterday, one was drinking battery acid,
and the other was eating fireworks. They charged one and let the other one off.

Ireland's worst air disaster occurred early this morning when a
small two-seater Cessna plane crashed into a cemetery. Irish search and
rescue workers have recovered 1826 bodies so far and expect that number to
climb as digging continues into the night.

pip ffh

Ahhh the old ones are the best.

FFH stands for 'Father from Hell'. This was a tradition started when I was sixteen and staying in a hall of residence in London. He was on holiday with the rest of the family. The mischievous old git would write things that were supposed to embarrass me ("Hope the rash has cleared up" etc.) on postcards so that everyone else could read them at the communal mail pigeon holes, signing himself 'FFH'.

"pip" is presumably a truncated 'pip pip' which he has taken to using recently.

An exchange of notes

On Monday morning, I left the following message:

Benny,

I've been summoned to London and I'll be back tomorrow. I don't remember much about last night after the sambucas.

The bits that I do remember make me grateful for the blackouts.

In lieu of a grovelling apology, please accept the contents of the bag in the fridge. Be assured that in terms of retribution, God sent three avenging angels to noisily construct a scaffolding tower outside my room as I was attempting to sleep off my hangover this morning.

Don't forget - house is on the DVR.

Tom

On my return this morning, I found the following:

Your apology was delicious - now please buy me some smoked salmon for leaving the boiler booster on for a day!

Dipstick ;)

And then via email, came this:

Thank you very much for the steak - I placed it on the bite-mark on my leg and it reduced the bruising nicely ;o)

This all has its root in the post ecuador celebrations on Sunday afternoon / evening and Monday morning. For Portugal, I may indulge less. When I woke on Monday morning recollections of the previous night proved so painful that I was essentially resolved to joining AA. Thankfully, I've shrugged that fanciful notion off. But it might be time to reign in the drinking again...

How many BT Engineers does it take to connect a phone line?

Five, apparently.

First someone called Brian comes round to 'survey' the site. Brian has to work out what work is involved. This takes Brian 5 minutes. But that's one day's work you see. And Brian doesn't work Fridays. So we have to wait for Monday.

On Monday, another guy comes round. Let's call him Pete. Pete replaces the faux gold phone socket with an approved BT one. He checks the wiring from the flat to the comms cupboard upstairs and installs an NTTP box in the cupboard. This box will split out the wire from the street into up to 8 separate channels to serve the flats. Pete explains that because the pole is on the other side of the street, a hoist has to attend to suspend the wire from the pole to the second storey of our building. The hoist will come in the afternoon.

In the afternoon, Pete calls to say that the hoist is stuck on another job and won't be able to make it until Tuesday.

On Tuesday, Bob (who he? who cares!) calls and says that the hoist is broken. Clutch problem. Dreadful. Another hoist will have to come on Wednesday.

On Tuesday afternoon, Bob turns up in person at the flat for no discernible reason. He inspects the new socket and the NTTP box. I persuade him that he ought to do something, chiefly by asking what the purpose of his visit is. He drills a hole in the wall for the cable to come through and then leaves. I suspect Bob wanted a quick job to do so that he could go home early.

I've done a lot of work with field engineers, you see, and they're all cheeky monkeys and know how to play their systems. Utilities engineers generally aren't allowed to leave a phase of work half done - leaving whole jobs half done is fine, but they aren't normally allowed to leave holes half dug, wires half connected etc. So if you want to play the system the trick is to do a small job early in the afternoon so that you won't have enough time left to start and finish a phase of a big job. Then you can go home early.

On Wednesday, the hoist rocks up and two cups of coffee later we have a dial tone.

I have no idea how long this would have taken to achieve if I actually had a job to do...

Broadband should be with us some time next week.....

Druid Action

solstice
Originally uploaded by tom_h.

For Benny's birthday on the 21st we all headed down to Stonehenge to watch the sunrise. This involved waking up at 3am or something like that. The joy of having Benny in your life is that he has an infinite supply of ideas that are equally as stupid as this. You never know when you're going to find yourself standing in a crusty filled field wondering to yourself how he comes up with them.

Anyway, Benny, Chris, Laura, Laura's mate and some random bar maid who nobody knew climbed into Chris' car and headed down the 303 at a surprisingly un-drewery-like speed. We parked up in a field that we were marshalled into and walked for about 20 -30 mins to stonehenge. There was a bit of a weird feeling about the place, but that could just have been the sleep deprivation. The sun rose and was quite beautiful, but obscured by clouds. That didn't stop the bongo players or the morris men. We wandered about a bit and then went home. Some chavs were kicking off on some tourists at one point. It was a strange mixture.

The others headed over to the zoo for the day. I stayed at home and watched 'Munich' for reasons that are now unclear to me. In the evening we had fish and chips and met the bowman crowd over the pub. Duncan and Mary joined us back at the flat after closing for cake and an abortive game of jenga. I think Benny had a really good day.

Bowman Re-opens

Post cricket last night (I came on as a sub for two overs when one of our team landed awkwardly during a catch and broke his collar bone and a rib; we beat the priory for the first time ever and go through to the final of the cup - yay us!) we headed down the pub for the first time in 6 weeks.

It's always interesting watching people explore a new but not totally unfamiliar space. I enjoy watching organisations after office moves, that kind of thing. The people are the same, but the space they're in is different and people all respond to change in different ways.

So, essentially the old bar is unchanged - perhaps slightly widened. The new 'wing' is bolted on to the side of the bar and more or less doubles the available drinking space. It has high ceilings and wood floors. The more adventurous amongst us we soon sitting in there, but by the end of the evening the old bar was full and the new bar was empty. Aside from a slight echo because of the glass and the polished floor, the physical characteristics of the new space are pretty identical to those of the old space. So I guess it's just a case of people preferring what they know. Benny's ex girlfriend rocked up which prompted a lot of piss taking (the guys refer to her as 'number 6' because he once made the mistake of revealing to them how many girls he had slept with).

Ginger has broken up with her boyfriend which I think is a good thing because it seemed quite a suffocating relationship and she's too young for all that. Duncan's still working on his puppet (having first acquired a dalek, he now seems to be indulging his childood dreams of owning a proto-thunderbird). Kev's still a funny piss taking bastard. Phil (and his dog jazz) are clearly happy to be back in familiar surroundings. Rob's still an amusingly belligerent psychological button-presser - at one point last night a number-6 oriented cross examination lead Benny to scream at us to shut up.

So basically it's all back to normal.

Eat my goal

Hasn't the world cup been incredible so far? Not just in respect of england's progress (as opposed to our performance at times) but in terms of being able to turn on the TV and watch awesome football every day? The tournament has coincided nicely with a lull in work so I've been able to watch a game or two most days. The quality is outstanding. Pity about ITV's coverage (as per usual) but otherwise great.

The more partisan side of me is still hopeful for england. There are still a huge number of things running in our favour - Rooney making rapid strides towards match fitness, prospects for Downing and Lennon (maybe even Theo) looking good. But the stand out players for me are Gerrard and Joe Cole. I remember how my heart sank when Gerrard was ruled out of the cup in 2002. And Cole is probably our biggest asset right now. They're both tremendous play makers - together they've either been responsible for or created the chances that built our most impressive goals. There's some speculation that Cole might be dropped in as a striker to replace Owen. I do hope this isn't true. We need Cole in midfield tackling and running at the opposition's defence much more than we need him goal hanging waiting to hoof crosses in.

It's been great socially as well. Jim and Angela hosted a great barbecue for the first game and for the second Benny and I headed over to a place called Blonde in town to watch it. The Sweden game's my favourite so far - because it was the night before Benny's birthday we had a bunch of people round here to watch it which was really nice. Not sure what's going on with the Ecuador game yet - quite up for watching it in the pub again but let's see.

St Catherine's Hill

Steps
Originally uploaded by Matt Chapman.

Went for a walk this morning up St Catherine's hill. The view was absolutely stunning. The weather was gorgeous too. I thought I might have a sit down / contemplation sesh at the top but someone else had had the same idea and it's a bit rude to crash other people's daydreams. So I walked down the other side and got a blue slush puppy from the garage instead :)

Everyone needs vices

I have a well documented fetish for kitchen utensils. This morning I noticed that the inlay for my garlic press had gone awol somewhere between London, the farm and Winchester, thus rendering said press useless. Any excuse will do! So out I went and I've only just gone and found an awesome shop full of inexplicable gadgets, funny looking metal things, pans in a bewildering array of dimensions and all sorts. It has an award for being the best cookshop in the country (2004).

I managed to restrict myself to purchasing a garlic press; but fear that next time I won't be so disciplined :(

Germany Efficiency

Greetings from Cafe Nero, by the way. Bulldog still being rather non-commital about broadband activation dates. Might throw some shit at them tomorrow.

Anyway. Slunk off werk for the afternoon after a most productive morning. Sat down in front of the South Korea / Togo game. Quite interesting sides: 90% of south koreans (According to some survey cited on the bbc) reckon they'll get through to the second round. Interesting, given that they've only ever been in one world cup final (I think) and that was the one they hosted with Japan last time.

Anyway, we cut to the stadium. They play the Korean anthem. Then they fuck up and play the korean anthem again instead of the Togo one!

Nice one!

Togo players not very amused.

Indoor Tetris

So we (by which I mean ‘I’) had sorted out a flat. But furniture wise, we were lacking. Specifically: we had one bed, one bookcase, one dining room table, one shite work table, a shoe rack and two wine racks (gives you a sense of my priorities). So we did what all men do in times of furniture crisis and set a course for ikea in croydon.

And we were there for almost 6 fucking hours.

I hate the place at the best of times, but by the end of the ordeal I wanted nothing more than to axe murder all the chav monsters in sight. However, put another way, all the furniture questions are now answered.

Tomorrow, a van and a number of men, hopefully of the variety who shun half sincere offers of assistance, will bowl up at Chateau Harvey. In the back of said van will be:

2x benches for the dining room table
2 x bookcase
1 x bed
2 x wardrobe
2 x chest of drawers
1 x work unit type thing
1 x bouncy chair (yay!)
1 x proper sit up work chair
Assorted impulse purchase shite

A few weeks later, another van will arrive containing a large sofa.

What has rapidly become clear to me is that Benny is about as good at working out where furniture should go as he is at being in the same country as you when you’re moving all his crap into his new house. Which is to say that he is by turns fucking inadequate and wilfully ignorant.

This is difficult to explain without the use of graphics and pointers. However, when a builder puts an aerial socket and two powerpoints by a TV shaped alcove in the corner of the living room, I tend to think “Someone’s trying to tell us something here”. Not Benny, oh no. Benny wants to try different combinations. He made a heap of suggestions, all of which were shite. We spent an hour fucking around with different scenarios before we ended up back where we started: the same conclusion that Drewery and I had arrived at within 5 milliseconds of opening the lounge door on Saturday morning. Benny – I shit you not – suggested that we put the TV on a fucking windowsill. A thirty four inch, CRT TV in a big bay window so that no one can see it and so that it blocks out half the already scant light in the room, Said we should put two bookcases in the alcove behind the TV. I indulged him by moving lots of furniture around and patiently explaining why idea # 259 didn’t work.

Grrrr.

Anyway, Ikea. Benny hadn’t been before. So we took a walk and gave him a general sense of the place. Then we made a list of the things we wanted. Then we went to find them. Then we compared notes. Blah blah blah. Job done, sometime around 1900 hours. Trolley stacked up to my head. Cunting around with the delivery man, trying to reconcile trolley contents against receipt. Came in at £120 less than I thought it would.

Great news though: like an angel, Ms Fox arranged for her book deal meeting announcement thing to coincide with our visit. One quick drive to Clapham later, we were being plied with some superb champagne. The most perfect ending to the ordeal imaginable. Seriously lovely to share a bit of the moment too. We appear to have caused loss of spelling ability, judging by some IM transcripts which have since been published. And, in retrospect, we may have left her high (drunk) and dry in quite a rude way. No social skills, us. That’s the problem.

In Cardiff

Cardiff’s a really interesting place. Every time I come here, which tends to be every year or so on average, vast swathes have totally changed. You know how some cities have quarters? “The Market Quarter”, “The Maritime Quarter” etc? Well, Cardiff has five quarters. Go figure.

Office is a bit strange too. Everyone appears to be on prozac. The guy I’m working with keeps on going off on massive tangents. I used to gently guide him back to what we need to talk about. Tiring of this, I’m now much more direct and more or less ignore what he says if it’s irrelevant. I, we, simply don’t have the time.

Just after lunch, he fell asleep at his desk. And not in a head-too-heavy-for-5-seconds-way. He was under for 15 minutes or so. People were taking pictures.

It’s an interesting group, right enough. The guy at the desk behind me called his girlfriend at quarter to six. Obviously I could only hear one side of the conversation:

“Where are you?”
“Where?”
“No, but where are you now?”
“So how do you think you’re going to get here in time?”
“No, if the walk’s 10 minutes and the bus is 20 minutes, you’re going to be late.”
“Well then why did you wait for me to call you to tell me you were going to be late?”
“Hello?”
[Slams phone down. Redials. No answer. Redials. No answer. Redials. No answer. Redials]
“Right- no, you look – go home and pack your stuff”
“No, GO HOME and PACK YOUR STUFF”

At this point, I started packing up my stuff. Lots of stuff followed about respect and blah blah. I mean – what kind of person has that kind of conversation in front of at least one total stranger and an office full of people, all of whom were totally silent throughout. Daft.

Around lunchtime, a water main burst by the castle and we all went to have a look.

Did I mention that the receptionist is really rather hot? And that we got on quite well? She’s lovely. Maybe in another life I’ll work in an office like that. And I can spend my afternoons sleeping off lunch at my desk, claiming to be rushed off my feet over the phone when I’ve blatantly got no work and flirting with the uber-nice receptionist. However, currently not to be.

The Marriott in Cardiff is really quite nice. The gym is excellent, if a bit over-packed with equipment. The food was good.

Lastly, Cardiff brings back disconcerting memories. I used to come here quite a bit before a fairly epic piece of skulduggery and betrayl almost exactly two years ago. The hotel people (bless them) have stuck me on the tenth floor – I can see loads of places which trigger memories and things. It has to be therapeutic in a way. But I’m secretly worried I might bump into people I really don’t want to see. Will be glad to get out of here tomorrow, that’s for sure.

Oh – still no internet at home. Likely to remain that way for a few weeks because it’s a new line. Pondering a 3G data card….

In Brief

We've moved in. Loads and loads and loads left to do - I imagine I'll be busy until Thursday sorting council tax, parking, utilities, broadband, insurance, postal redirect, washing, unpacking, ikea-ing etc.

But the important thing is that we're in. Some snags: phone line not working (not even barred, so an engineer will have to come out to physically connect the line), thus no internet access at all (writing this to you from cafe nero). Structurally it's all ok. But we're waiting for curtains, door stops, mirrors in bathrooms etc. Additionally, the dish washer ain't working and you can't open it the whole way because the kick board underneath doesn't have the requisite notch sawn out of it.

All of this would not have been possible without Kev, Duncan and especially Mr Drewery, who was also kind enough to join me on an excellent winchester pub crawl on Saturday night. Big relief to be in, now the real work starts.

Benny has finished his journey to John O'Groates and is currently driving home. He finished at about 2300 last night. I expect they are all totally fucked.

ZZzzzz

I am so fucking tired! And it's 4pm! It's because I had a big lunch, but I had to have a big lunch because I've been running round all day and havent eaten anything since a pathetic attempt at dinner last night. I've got our moving in kit and breakfast. Drewery - if you're reading this, we're going out for dinner tonight. I simply cannot and will not be fucked to cook dinner. Beer would be nice too. Christ I've earned it.

Why is that little fucker benny not here helping me, the bastard? Obviously I know why. Obviously this is rhetorical. Obviously it's actually for a fairly good reason. But I need to resent something, so Benny will do. Back to the packing, via another pint of apple juice I think.

Right!

That's all benny's stuff, the dvd player & hi fi, all my kitchen stuff, all the dvds and xbox games, speakers etc. wrapped, packed and boxed. All the awkward items bar the chairs are outside, ready for loading.

I'm starving! Off to hunt / gather some food, get some provision etc.

All systems go!

Letting agent has confirmed we're on for the big move tomorrow. Kev (with his van), Duncan (with his estate car) and drewery (with his, erm, boundless energy and enthusiasm) are all teed up and ready to go.

The final list of things the agents required were:

A holding deposit
A dilapidation / damage deposit
An inventory fee
Evidence of contents / fixtures and fittings insurance
Proof of address from both of us
Proof of ID from both of us
Personal references for both of us
Work reference from Benny
Trade reference from me
Bank reference from me
Last six months bank statements from me

Nightmare!

They also wanted a tennancy agreement signed yesterday. Don't ask me what I had to do to get Benny's signature on it - he's somewhere between Moffatt and Edinburgh with no fax, email or reliable phone.

So I've started packing. Benny said he'd packed, but what he meant was that he'd piled his stuff up in the middle of his room, so I've just spent 2 hours sorting that lot out. Key thing is to make sure we get max benefit from having 4 people and 4 vehicles available. This house is small - there's no way one person carrying a crate can get past a person going the other way to pick up a crate. So I've also had to move all his stuff downstairs.

Large items I'm already shifting out into the porch, for easy loading into the van. The most cumbersome bits are going to be:

Dining Table + Chairs
Double Bed + Mattress
Telly
Benny's clothes rail
Coffee table
Guitars
Amp

At the other end, the entrance to the flat is at street level, with parking right outside. The dining room / kitchen is on the same floor - so most cumbersome items will be going straight through. The bedrooms are on the lower floor - shouldn't be a problem.

I'm also creating a list of things to make sure we keep with us as we do the move:

Drinks
Cups
Soap
Kitchen Towel
Radio

If you can think of anything else, please add a comment.

Ok, back to the packing!