Dr. Crawley : Not really a doctor

Morning luvs

2006-09-12T04:23:00.000+01:00

How are we all?

Apologies for constant crapness. I've been doing my best, honest. Actually I've been very busy with work.

Also, remember that Estate Agent who saved my life? (yes really). Well it seems she may be a 'love interest' in this story after all. Sort of. Time will tell on that one.

In... umm... a completely unrelated matter, I receive a friendly text at 03:48am from someone who has woken from their sleep and their first/only thought before going back to sleep (when they have to be up for work at 7) is to send me a nice message. This, I believe is the action of someone who cares, which makes me smile inside.

Love to all, like.

x

New toy

2006-09-02T23:16:00.000+01:00

I've been busy.

Not writing informative blog entries.

Not working.

Oh no.

I've been here: http://www.questionswap.com/

It's honestly the best thing ever.

And I'm currently the second best Question answerer. Which is most gratifying. Hussar!

Busy day

2006-09-02T17:18:00.000+01:00

VISA (y'know, the credit card people) have a had a huge outage, which will probably make the news tomorrow unless something exciting happens. Can't really say more, but I'm having a V busy day.

You heard it here first. Possibly.

Hey hey hey

2006-08-22T03:41:00.000+01:00

We played a gig in town tonight and we were fucking ace. I may have offended or annoyed some people, but I'm in a great mood, for the first time in AGES. So hussar! :O)

I'm quite, quite drunk.

Aberdeen was good. Nothing else of interest to report for now. Nothing I can think of anyway. *hic*

Nighty night.

Righty then...

2006-08-16T20:08:00.000+01:00

So the washer man came, stayed an hour, couldn't fix it. I'll have to speak to Curry's and organise a replacement. Great.

Still, I won £50!

Busy weekend ahead. I'm off up to Aberdeenshire for a weekend of tents, cars and drinking. Should be fun. Driving up overnight on Friday, and back on Monday in time for gig on Monday night! I'll be knackered but it'll be fun. I hope. I'm sure it will be.

I've blown my £50 winnings on a new tent. It's one of the two second jobbies that you throw in the air and it unfolds itself. Magic. Like this. Only it's the bigger 3-man version, so I've got room to stretch out.

Bit exciting. :)

Woah!

2006-08-15T13:06:00.000+01:00

1. He's here! He's here!

2. I just checked the post, anjd I've won £50 on my premium bonds! (my first EVER windfall from the £100 of bonds that I've had for 24 and a bit years.

YEEAY!

Back to reality bump

2006-08-15T12:22:00.000+01:00

K. Glad you enjoyed last week's literary foray. Here's today's news, which won't be making it into Hollyoaks scripts any time soon, so don't worry, I'm not spoiling anything.

Being a shift worker is great, but it does have some chronic downsides. Today I'm sat in the middle of one of them. I could dive in, but you'll enjoy a biot of backgraound first:

So, last week, I bought a new washer/dryer (cos the old washer was my ex's, and I took it up north when I helped her move into to her new house). I went to the effort of taking it home myself, rather than waiting for delivery, cos I had a bit of a clean pant shortage. (For Americans, I mean underwear, not trousers. I wouldn't give two shits if I had no clean trousers, tbh). So I bought it. I splashed out on a Bosh, cos I'm a TOTAL brand-whore, and there was no way I was having something that says 'CANDY' in big childish captals sat next to my smeg dishwasher. Anyway, I got it home, manhandled it up the hill into my house, and gently installed it into the kitchen. Plumbed it in expertly and with minimal fuss, and set it off on it's first (empthy) wash; 90 degrees, for anyone who needs to know and has googled "smeg candy shits trousers" in a couple of months time. It got to the end, ish, do I dialled it on and stuck some of my less than clean stuff in. Turned it on, and went to do something else. I came back, and it was making funny noises when It should be spinning. Long story short, it doesn't spin. Rendering it's dryer function utterly useless, and leaving my clothes wetter than Peter Mandelson's handshake.

But then Jeff beck pops his head round the door and says there's a sweet shop just over the road. So we go. And it's closed.

Sorry, wrong story. Ummm, yeah. So I call Currys, and say this pissing washer you sent me's a bag of shit (or words to that effect), and they give me a number to call for an engineer, and the earliest they can send one is today, and the most specific time they can give me is "between 12 and 4pm". So I have to be up for 12. Which I am. Watch him turn up at 10 past 4. If he does I'll likely stab him in the neck then busy him under the driveway. Or make him a cup of tea and smile simperingly as he fixes me washer, then go back to bed incandescent and sweaty for all of 10 mins fitfull rest before I'll have to leave for work.

Or he might be just pulling up outside now. Who knows. Who can see in to the future? Not I, dear reader.

But christ, I'm going to suffer for this at about 4am tomorrow morning when I start hallucenating at work.

Take it easy groovers...

Pulp Diction

2006-08-13T22:28:00.000+01:00

"I've got an end of the world story," says Dag, finishing off the remainder of the iced tea, ice cubes long melted. He then takes off his shirt, revealing his somewhat ribby chest, lights another filter-tipped cigarette, and clears his throat in a nervous gesture.

The end of the world is a recurring motif in Dag's bedtime stories, eschatological You-Are-There accounts of what it's like to be Bombed, lovingly detailed, and told in deadpan voice. And so, with little more ado, he begins:

"Imagine you're standing in line at a supermarket, say, the Vons supermarket at the corner of Sunset and Tahquitz -- but theoretically it can be any supermarket anywhere -- and you're in just a vile mood because driving over you got into an argument with your best friend. The argument started over a road sign saying Deer Next 2 Miles and you said, 'Oh, really, they expect us to believe there are any deer left?' which made your best friend, who was sitting in the passenger seat looking through the box of cassette tapes, curl up their toes inside their running shoes. And you sense you've said something that's struck a nerve and it was fun, so you pushed things further: 'For that matter,' you said, 'you don't see nearly as many birds these days as you used to, do you? And, you know what I heard the other day? That down in the Caribbean, there aren't any shells left anywhere because the tourists took them all. And, haven't you ever wondered when flying back from Europe, five miles over Greenland, that there's just something, I don't know -- inverted -- about shopping for cameras and scotch and cigarettes up in outer space?'

"Your friend then exploded, called you a real dink, and said, 'Why the hell are you so negative all the time? Do you have to see something depressing in everything?'

"You said back, 'Negative? Moi? I think realistic might be a better word. You mean to tell me we can drive all the way here from L.A. and see maybe ten thousand square miles of shopping malls, and you don't have maybe just the weentsiest inkling that something, somewhere, has gone very very cuckoo?'

"The whole argument goes nowhere, of course. That sort of argument always does, and possibly you are accused of being unfashionably negative. The net result is you standing alone in Vons checkout line number three with marshmallows and briquettes for the evening barbecue, a stomach that's quilted and acidic with pissed-offedness, and your best friend sitting out in the car, pointedly avoiding you and sulkily listening to big band music on the A.M. radio station that broadcasts ice rink music down valley from Cathedral City.

"But a part of you is also fascinated with the cart contents of the by-any-standards-obese man in line up ahead of you.

"My gosh, he's got one of everything in there! Plastic magnums of diet colas, butterscotch-flavored microwave cake mixes complete with their own baking tins (ten minutes of convenience; ten million years in the Riverside County Municipal Sanitary Landfill), and gallons and gallons of bottled spaghetti sauce...why his whole family must be awfully constipated with a diet like that, and hey -- isn't that a goiter on his neck? 'Gosh, the price of mlk is so cheap, these days,' you say to yourself, noting a price tag on one of his bottles. You smell the sweet cherry odor of the gum rack and unread magazines, cheap and alluring.

"But suddenly there's a power surge.

"The lights brighten, return to normal, dim, then die. Next to go is the Muzak, followed by a rising buzz of conversation similar to that in a movie theatre when a film snaps. Already people are heading to aisle seven to grab the candles.

"By the exit, an elderly shopper is peevishly trying to bash her cart through electric doors that won't open. A staff member is trying to explain that the power is out. Through the other exit, propped open by a shopping cart, you see your best friend enter the store. 'The radio died,' your friend announces, 'and look--' out the front windows you see score of vapor trails exiting the direction of the Twentynine Palms Marine base up the valley, '--something big's going on.'

"That's when the sirens begin, the worst sound in the world, and the sound you've dreaded all your life. It's here: the soundtrack to hell -- wailing, flaring, warbling, and unreal -- collapsing and confusing both time and space the way an ex-smoker collapses time and space at night when they dream in horror that they find themselves smoking. But here the ex-smoker wakes up to find a lit cigarette in his hand and the horror is complete.

"The manager is heard through a bullhorn, asking shoppers to calmly vacate, but no one's paying much attention. Carts are left in the aisles and the bodies flee, carrying and dropping looted roast beefs and bottles of Evian on the sidewalk outside. The parking lot is now about as civilized as a theme park's bumper cars.

"But the fat man remains, as does the cashier, who is wispily blond, with a bony hillbilly nose and translucent white skin. They, your best friend, and you remain frozen, speechless, and your minds become the backlid NORAD world map of mythology -- how clichè! And on it are the traced paths of fireballs, stealthily, inexorably passing over Baffin Island, the Aleutians, Labrador, the Azores, Lake Superior, the Queen Charlotte Islands, Puget Sound, Maine ... it's only a matter of moments now, isn't it?

"I always promised myself,' says the fat man, in a voice so normal as to cause the three of you to be jolted out of your thoughts, 'that when this moment came, I would behave with some dignity in whatever time remains and so, Miss--' he says, turning to the clerk in particular, 'let me please pay for my purchases.' The clerk, in the absence of other choices, accepts his money.

"Then comes The Flash.

"'Get down,' you shout, but they continue their transaction, deer transfixed by headlights. 'There's no time!' But your warning remains unheeded.

"And so, just before the front windows become a crinkled, liquefied imploding sheet -- the surface of a swimming pool during a high dive, as seen from below --

"And just before you're pelleted by a hail of gum and magazines --

"And just before the fat man is lifted off his feet, hung in suspended animation and bursts into flames while the liquefied ceiling lifts and drips upward --

"Just before all of this, your best friend cranes his neck, lurches over to where you lie, and kisses you on the mouth, after which he says to you, 'There. I've always wanted to do that.'

"And that's that. In the silent rush of hot wind, like the opening of a trillion oven doors that you've been imaginging since you were six, it's all over: kind of scary, kind of sexy, and tainted by regret. A lot like life, wouldn't you say?"

Taken from Generation X, by Douglas Coupland. If you haven't read it, buy it, read it, come back and complain to me if you think it's shit. You'll be wrong though.

Update

2006-08-08T03:28:00.000+01:00

I've been a bit shit recently haven't I. Sorry.

Anyway, I had an interesting non-sexual expereience tonight, with a nice lady who seemed to understand me better than most. She's taken, which is a bit of a pisser, but that didn't stop me making a minor twat of myself. She didn't seem to mind though, which says enough. Marvellous. Hopefully we shall go out and get trashed again some time soonish. It's felt like I haven't had (m)any friends around recently, so she's a very, very welcome breath of fresh air. It's a bit of a shame she's so cursedly attractive, or I'd be able to not think filthy things about her as soon as I cross a drunkenness threshold, but I'm a mostly nice kind of guy, so it's not a problem.

For the record, since my last post, relations with my ex have hit rock bottom, almost from the minute she sent that nice message I quoted. Which is shit, cos I really havn't anyone else to lean on. Meh. My little girl is 6 months old this sunday, so I shall be visiting then to celebrate, and hopefully have a marvellous time. It's weird to think, 6 months ago I was the happiest person in the universe, bar none. To be honest I try not to think back to then, cos it really upsets me, but amongst other things it makes me realise that this blog, which I never expected to keep going more than a week, has lasted almost 9 months now. From the highs to (lets be honest) the rock fucking bottom, I've kept this up. Not as regularly as I might have liked, but for me, an amazingly regular record of how my life has spiralled into the pits of darkest shutty darkness, and then got a little bit better.

9 months is the amount of time it takes for a human being to grow from a spunky mess and a weird round thing, into an amazing cute lil baby. Hopefully in the next 9 months, I might grow up just enough to survive in this world. A lot of the time I don't hold out very much hope, and I can't make any promises that I'll be here in 9 months, if I'm brutally honest, but despite being pretty depressed a lot of the time, I'm actually surprisingly optimistic. Even my boss at work sent me an email saying he hoped I was ok and feeling a bit better than I had been, and while he couldn't begin to understand how shit things had been recently (he has two young daughters himself), if there was anything at all he could do, just to let him know. I hadn't mentioned that I'd been feeling low, but he sent that. Little things like that make an incredible amount of difference to my life at the minute. We don't really know each other, but that little bit of empathy means an awful lot. The mere fact that there are people in the world who have those qualities, (being nice to people they don't know, becasue they've no reason not to be), then I'll never ever give up, because however unhappy I am, if I can do the same thing, and maybe make that difference to someone else, and if I can still play a part in my beautiful little girl's life, then I have the best reason's in the world to keep going, and even smile a little bit.

People change lives without realising it. Tonight, a nice lady (who, surreally is an estate agent - so don't judge a book by its cover) has probably changed my life, and she almost certainly just thinks I fancied a shag and went home a bit disappointed. She's partly right of course, but I'm verging on sober now, and I'm still happier than I was when I woke up. Which is rare.

Along with that, I read a stunning post on Random Act's blog a couple of days ago, which (alcoholism aside) really hit home to me and struck chords with how I've been feeling the last month or so. In a way it's nice to know that other people have been in the same place as you, and come through it in a positive way.

So I've flushed my little stash of paracetamol down into the communal oblivion of the sewage network, taken a deep breath, and now I'm going to go to bed and see what the morning brings.

Thankyou to anyone and everyone who said hello to me tonight. You'll never know, but you've made a difference to one person's life. And that, in itself is quite amazing really.

Sleep well, you lot.

OK

2006-07-19T03:51:00.000+01:00

Yesterday things felt better. For the first time in quite a long time. Today things still feel better. I can't put my finger on it exactly, but I had an email conversation with my ex, and she was more helpful, supportive and understanding than anyone might expect. This is just one of many things that make her a fabulous mother and a good person. So, although she'll never see this (i hope!), and I've thanked her directly, I'm thanking her publicly. In a fashion.

Edited section of her message for those who may be interested:

It will get better, honest. And one day you'll find someone who you feel able to share your life with, and you'll be happy (it's odd but a month or so ago that would've made me cry, now it has no effect at all).

And don't forget that the bed is never fully made, it gets rumpled and the sheets get changed and it becomes almost like a different bed. Do you know what I mean? My German teacher at school, Miss Rumney, had a good one like that...

Your life is a train, you go on your journey, and people get on and then they get off again. They are with you for a while, and then their journey takes a different path and they leave you, or you leave them. Some take your train more often than others, but there is no permanent passenger. Some who get on your train alter where it's leading, but they will always get off, even if they do board again.

Not sure I've explained it very well though. Let me know if it helps. Oh, and don't push yourself, you'll grow up when you're ready to, you'll take responsibility when you really need to, after all, to be prefectly honest, me and Jr can manage without you. We'll find someone new (sorry), but you'll always be wanted, not needed, but wanted. Which in my opinion, is
worth more.

That last bit made me cry like a girl (at work), but not in a bad way.

Sorry...

2006-07-17T04:57:00.000+01:00

Been neglecting bloggage recently. I'll be honest, it's cos I'm more depressed than I can ever remember being, and I don't particularly want to pour out all my inadequacies and reasons for hating myself to a disinterested audience. It might be theraputic, but I just don't fancy it at the minute. Maybe another time, when I've had some rest, or found a reason to be cheerful. At the moment, I just miss my perfect little baby girl and want tiny cuddles more than anything on this earth. But because of my own idiocy (and my shift pattern) I can't have that until Saturday at the earliest. And if I'd just been slightly more mature, gone about things in a slightly different way, or just been vaguely able to cope with a bit of responsibility, then I could be having them at ten past 7 when I get home from work. And that's really, really fucking sad.

Ahoy!

2006-07-08T14:43:00.000+01:00

"What's new?" I hear you ask.

Not a lot.

My mobile got stolen last Thursday, and I've only just got a replacement, which was annoying. I went out this monday (6 days ago) and am STILL feeling awful. Not drunk that much in ages. Was very sick. Had to get the taxi to stop. On the dual carriageway. I chundered in the verge, and then we were away. Classy.

I think I have gladular fever or something. I can't move my head, cos my neck, shoulders and ears all hurt so much, and my glands (the ones by my jaw) feel like golf balls. Very tender golf balls.

Hope you lot are all well. I'll be back properly soon. x

yawn

2006-06-23T04:37:00.000+01:00

I would have posted a bit over the last couple of days, but honestly, nothing's happened of interest at all.

I've spent a few hundred quid in Ikea, worked and slept. Until that routine changes, I don't really have much to say. Just ticking over...

Hope everyone's well!

Work woes...

2006-06-15T01:57:00.000+01:00

Another long one, so brace yourself darlings. (fnarr fnarr)

In keeping with yesterdays bringing you up to date theme, I'll get onto matters less personal.

You may remember what when I last mentioned work, things wre ripe for changing. In the old days, I came in to work, and on a night shift there'd be 3 or 4 of us sat in the room, basically doing as little work as possible. I was the lucky one, because I do a different job from the other 2 or 3, and sit about 20 yards away, with a row of 4 desks all to myself. Particularly lucky, cos while they have a constant schedule of monitoring and admin tasks to complete, I generally had about enough work to fill 3 hours of my 12 hour shift.

Anyway, since about 4 weeks ago, my job has taken on a load of new stuff, so there's now me and two others at MY row of desks, with enough work to keep all three of us busy for most of the night. Which to be fair is shite. They also all earn more than me. I'm used to that though. I had a church mouse as a pet once that had 5 times as much money as me in a cash ISA. So our 'shift' is now composed of three people, instead of one.

This has several repercussions for my life in general -

* In the past, I've been known to spend 9 hours out of my 12 hour shift playing championship manager on my laptop. I can't do that any more.

* If, for whatever reason, I'd had piss-all sleep during the day (I've a related story to this effect about yesterday which I shall tack on the end of this), I could realistically grab a decent three hours kip during the night shift, and give myself a fighting chance of navigating my way home down the M1 in the morning without collecting an armco.

* I used to be able to sit and read people's blogs all shift without feeling guilty. Now I feel like I should minimise them if people walk behind me, in case they get the arse about me being a workshy cunt as and when I can get away with it.

So anyway, I had my interview last Friday for one of the four 'shift leader' positions. It went shite, cos they managed to arrange the interview for 3 hours after I'd finished a night shift, leaving me just enough time to shine my shoes, don my suit and have a shave, but no time for sleep. Fingers crossed anyway.

------------

So yesterday's story, and the reason I REALLY wish I could be asleep right now -

Finished work at 7, and drove down to Nottingham (about 40mins) to drop car off for long overdue service, and a few bits of work that it needed. Arrived around ten to 8, handed over keys, got courtesy car and drove home again, having agreed to call him around half 1pm to see when it'd be ready and what'd need doing, etc.

Woke up at half 1, phoned, all as expected, then went to the posh jewellery shop and spunked £500 on the TAG watch I mentioned yesterday. It's blue and smart as fook. Drove down to Nottingham and picked up my car. Winced as I handed over £500 for the work done. Drove to Ikea. Spunked £117 on wooden blinds for downstairs, and a new light for the shitter. Swanky. Got back on M1. Sat in queue for 2 and a bit hours cos of crash near J31. Abandoned plans to go home and sleep, and went straight to work, arriving 3 minutes late. Cuntsocks.

I'm knackered now, but I have a very smart watch.

Work asked me to work fri and sat night overtime. That would mean me working 11 nights out of 12. All 12 hours long. So I said no.

Matthew's coming over friday and we're going to go out and drink til we're sick. I'm not missing out on that even if the OT would work out at £150 per shift. I need the money. Don't care. Drinking rocks.

I'll sleep when I'm dead.

Or Saturday.

Edit:
I know you're all dying to see, so here's the watch I bought.

If my mate Matthew was here he'd be saying "Vulgar as fuck. Very 'new money'. Very you.". (Just jealous, of course).

It's funny, he's my best mate, and he never even got me a birthday card. I got him a 12 month subscription to F1 Magazine for his birthday. Love him to bits. Wouldn't have him any other way. I'm the soft one, see. He's the balding one who makes me feel tall and lithe.

Hey kids

2006-06-14T03:16:00.000+01:00

y'arite then? I'm a bit better. I moved into my new house (note careful use of the word 'my' in preference to 'our') last week and am gradually settling in. It's a shithole, but it's getting better with each trip to ikea I make. The garden even has a gate. And most of the floors are verging on clean.

I'm a single bloke now, which in between the soul-crushing pain of missing my little girl with an intensity that burns hotter than the sun, is actually pretty cool. I have a sectret story about the engagement ring too, which will make me sound like a complete c***, but I'll tell you it anyway shortly. Current state of play is, I'm on nights (19:00 - 07:15) til friday morning, then home (5 mins away now), then sleep for a bit, then out on the piss in new home town, then bed again. Then my folks are over saturday to help with housey stuff, then sunday off to see my ex & little girl for the day. Which will be lovely. As it is at the minute, I'm seeing her for 1 day a week, for about 11 hours. Which is great, but not enough. Unfortunately they live 100+ miles away now, which is a PITA. I miss her lots.

I went for some retail therapy today (actually yesterday) though.

Have been trying to flog the ex's engagement ring (initial cost £750) to fund the laptop she bought the other week, and also help her out with housing costs and stuff. (I'm quite nice like that). I expected to see at least £400, so I've already given her £400. (Like I say, I'm quite nice. Don't get carried away though, it goes sour). After visiting a few jewellers, the best offer I'd had was £60. (Bit rubbish). So I wedged my tail between my legs, and went back, receipt in hand to the place we bought it from, and told them what happened. Sods law, predictably if I'd been a bit quicker (30 days) I could have had a full refund. But the nice lady said she'd see what she could do and wandered off to scam me with the manager.

At this point, you may be interested to know that I suffer from a particularly nasty illness, which sometimes affects me when I'm out shopping. I can't resist watches. I love them. I don't often give in, but I always find myself staring at them in jewellers windows. If I didn't have a guilt complex about spending money on myself, I'd have a wardrobe full. I actually only have four, but I love them all like children.

Anyway, back to the plot. Sales lady comes back, and says unfortunately they can't offer me a refund, as the ring was special order, etc, but they can offer me a credit note for £650 to spend in store. Pehaps sir would like a little something for himself? Have you seen our selection of posh watches?

So I'm sat there, with a little complimentary cup of mineral water, with my game face set to miserable, looking a bit disapponted and listless, whist in my head there's an image of a little watch tea-party going on, accompanied by spectacular fireworks. I swear I can hear a band playing.

So in the right leg pocket of my combats right now, I have a credit note to the value of £650, which, after much careful consideration, si likely to be spunked on a very posh TAG watch later on this afternoon on my way into my next night shift.

Now THAT's retail therapy.

Quick update

2006-05-01T17:27:00.000+01:00

Other half, dog and little'n left for pastures new on Saturday. They're bringing the dog back tomorrow though, which is good cos I'll get to see my beautiful little girl, albeit only for about half an hour in my lunch break. I'm off to see my folks tonight, so that'll be nice. Not seen them since March, cos they've been away on holidays.

Worst Birthday Ever

2006-04-28T01:57:00.000+01:00

Morning all. Proper apologies for the recent hiatus, especially since there've been some fairly blogworthy events in the last few days, but I've been so busy trying to sort my life out I've not really had time/inclination to log on here.

Long story short (for now) it looks as if the mrs (and mother to my beautiful 10 week old daughter) are going to part company.

And it was my birthday yesterday. And I'm on nights. I saw my birthday in at midnight with a crafty beer at my desk (naughty) and have not slept since about 2pm on the 26th. I feel shite. Yesterday, for about 3 hours, I cried so hard I couldn't speak or see. For the first time since I was probably 10 or 11, I was so sad all I wanted in the world was for my mum to give me a cuddle and tell me everything would be ok and not to worry. I honestly can't remember the last time all I wanted in the universe was my mum.

My parents are currently on a motor-home tour of this end of Europe, and I haven't the heart to tell them and ruin their holiday. It'll be bad enough when they come home. I had a horrible chat with them earlier when they phoned to wish me a happy birthday, and I pretended everything was fine and thanked them lots and tried to tell them what a great day I'd had.

There's nothing more annoying imho than some whiney twat filling up their blog by bleating on about how bad their life is compared to everyone else, so I'll leave it for now, but I really am in bits at the moment. I just want my mum and my little girl and everyone else can fuck off.

I'll be alright though. Sorry for not very upbeat/interesting post after so long. Thanks for reading. x

Celemabration!

2006-04-09T19:33:00.000+01:00

The Mrs and I are to be wed! She asked me a wee while ago if I'd marry her, and I gracefully conceded defeat. :O)

AND Stoke won 4-1 yesterday. The whole blue world has clearly gone mad.

Oooh. Sapphire, diamond and white gold. Pretty, if 'spensive.

Bankers

2006-03-29T22:05:00.000+01:00

Baby Islay has her first bank account. :O)

The passbook arrived today. It's very smart, isn't it.

PAUL O GRADY EATS THE WHOLE WORLD

2006-03-29T17:07:00.000+01:00

Well, Deal or No Deal has finished, so I've got a wee while to kill before I head to work. What to do, what to do.

If only I could enjoy the Paul O Grady show. Sadly, our ITV1 reception is awful. Oh, not to worry, he's on 4 too.

What *IS* the world coming to? I'm off out.

Oooh!

2006-03-27T20:10:00.000+01:00

What a busy week and a bit it's been. We binned the guitarist, so that's sorted, and I've been playing in his stead, which means I get to posture about with a guitar strapped on and be even more of a rock god than I was before. Albeit only in rehearsals. We cancelled all gigs in the near future so we could get our head's round the changes, and write a load of new stuff so he didn't get sniffy about us using his chords and what have you. So in two rehearsals we've managed to get 5 new tracks down, which is rather good. We've got a gig still provisionally on the 5th of April which is a 'chridy' event at a school in the mid afternoon in front of a load of journos and politicians. I've still no idea how/why we got the gig, and they're trying to find someone else on our insistance. So hopefully we'll get out of that, cos I'm shitting myself about exposing my guitar-playing inadequacies in front of a shower of sober old people(at best) and sober yoofs (the horror).

Aside from that, all's well. Baby is gorgeous. F1 season is interesting. Stoke haven't lost 3-0 for weeks, and I've found my favourite hat.

Busy busy

2006-03-16T07:00:00.000Z

Sorry it's been a bit quiet this week, but I've been fairly busy. Managed to play football AND do a gig on Tuesday, which was a bit hectic. Also, my band are parting company with one fo our guitarists today, although it hasn't actually happened yet. Not very nice though, cos he's an alright bloke, and a very talented guitarist. He's just got a bit of an attitude issue that's been getting everyone's backs up to the point where something needs to happen. The final straw was on Tuesday when he was on the door (he arranged the gig and was also promoter), and had his own little VIP list, letting his GF in free, and her mates, but he charged the Drummer's wife and cousin to get in. Says enough I think. Bit of a shame though and doubtless it won't be very nice.

Told you we'd be shit

2006-03-12T06:03:00.000Z

"...watch the Scotland rugby team defy their recent form and lose to Ireland"

I *AM* nostradamus.

Shite.

2006 - Year of F1

2006-03-10T23:49:00.000Z

Hurrah! Another F1 season is only [some] hours away! (35 at the time of writing)

I've already done the most important part, before a wheel has been competitively turned. That's right. Betting! I've put... oooh, I can't remember off the top of my head. I've put a fiver on a few unlikely types to win the Championship, anyway.

So where do we start? It'll be an exciting year. Lots of new rules. Comedy all at once qualifying, and some new teams. Sort of. I've always liked F1. From when I was little and watched it on a sunday with my dad, right through the 90s to the 2000s when it went shit. I still liked it. My lowest point was when my beloved Arrows team went under, but they're actually back this season, in the guise of the amusing and no-doubt catastrophically poor SuperAguri team. To be honest, success for them will be to finish a race this season. Now I like an under-dog, but even for me that'll be stretching it a bit far.
In past seasons, I've been quite keen on the whole BAR / Jenson Button phenomenon, but they're looking a bit corporate now since they've become honda, and the fact that they might actually be quite successful puts me off a bit. I particularly enjoyed the rebirth of David Coulthard last season, as part of the super-cool Red Bull team - he's gone from the tedious studious McLaren company man to the unshaven, cool, Eddie Irvine style figure, who takes neither shit, or prisoners. I can't help but be a bit bored of it now though. I'm starting to miss his clean-shaven chiselled jawline and "I'll win this year" Ron Dennisisms. Nowadays, you don't see a photo of him without him looking all dirty, unshaven and basically looking like he's been up all night shagging supermodels. Which, likely, he has. The bastard.
So anyway, I've got to support someone. And I think, it'll probably be Red bull. And/Or Scuderia Toro Rosso. Who are also Red Bull. But whose car's are undoubtably the prettiest on the grid this year, being a slightly darker, moodier shade of blue to their sister team. I'm also attracted the the Toro Rosso, cos they're part owned by Gerhard Berger, who I liked when he was racing.
BUT - all this will likely change when I get all excited tomorrow about some other team. Yes, tomorrow. Of course, I actually mean today. Saturday, that is. Cos while I've been typing this, the clock has ticked past midnight. Hurrah! It's the weekend. So I'm on nights. I'll finish at 7am. Go home to bed. get up at 10am. Watch qualifying. Snooze for a bit, get up again at 14:30 to watch the Scotland rugby team defy their recent form and lose to Ireland, then go back to bed for about half an hour, then come back to work. So expect a post tomorrow complaining about how tired I am! And then after work tomorrow, I'll go to bed again. Then get up at 10am again to watch the race itself!

I AM an idiot. I think I may have a subconscious alterior motive for supporting Red Bull this season, seeing as they support me. Marvellous. Wish me luck then.

In other news, I went to TK Maxx on the way top work, and bought a t-shirt, two comfy dad sweaters, and a big coat. Which is quite posh and made by these folk. Mmmm. Spendy. I look like less of a tramp though.

INNOVATION

2006-03-10T20:27:00.000Z

Oh my god oh my god oh my god oh my god oh my god oh my god oh my god!

I'm *SO* excited.

Gillette have invented a new razor, and *seriously* you will not beilieve what they've come up with.

Honestly.

Are you sitting down? Are you? Then here it is:

FIVE FUCKING BLADES

Genius.

Credit where it's due though, they've made a very posh interactive webby, with sexy lady who shakes her shoulders a bit while it's loading. Very good.

I'm going to invent a 6-blade razor now, and trump them all. I'll be rich. Rich, I tell's ya...

Tenuous

2006-03-10T20:14:00.000Z

Note the new uber-cool link to your right.

Here it is, for the hard of thinking: MC Hammer

Oh yes. Rock.

Interestingly, Mr Hammer and I have had records produced by the same bloke. A lovely little oirish chap called Noel Rafferty. He recorded, engineered and produced the first EP I ever recorded, with a former band (in 2002 I think). Previously he'd worked with ACDC and MC Hammer, to name just a couple. How the mighty had fallen! Every time he went to move a mic or adjust a drum skin or something, one of us would stop him with a panic look and say (after a suitably dramatic pose) "...can't touch that".

He had the good grace to smile most of the times. Thoroughly nice chap, too.

Enjoy...

(this is all worryingly true)

Best thing ever*

2006-03-09T22:42:00.000Z

parcelforce crawley depot

Do a google search for Parcelforce Crawley Depot. Go on. I dare ya.

I'm quite pleased I come up for that. It's cool. I like red, it's my favourite colour, and they all have big red vans.

What I DON'T understand, is someone searched google for 'Parcelforce Crawley Depot', and then found a link to me, and on reading the preable "then clambered back in the Crawley-mobile for another monster journey up the ... I manage to find the exact location of the depot, and figure out that it's ..." decided that this clearly DID contain the information they were searching for, and would, presumably, help them find their errant parcel, or whatever.

What a fucking crazy bastard you must have been, mr 6:49pm today. And credit to you for sticking around for a full 29 seconds. You rock my world. :)

*no, ok. But it's quite good.

Easy come, easy go

2006-03-09T19:29:00.000Z

Hurrah! Have bought a different house! No time wasted! Offer accepted this morning. Tis nicer, and bigger, and 2.5 miles door-to-door from work. Marvellous.

Oh yes...

2006-03-08T12:17:00.000Z

I was Busta-Rhymes cool before he was. I rock.

(For clarity, he's the top one, you can see a bit of my arm and chest hiding behind my lovely daughter in the bottom one)

This cheered me up.

Oh yeah, we're off to see another house this avo, so fingers crossed...

House

2006-03-07T07:16:00.000Z

Well, after 5 months of waiting, the house move has finally fallen through due to the people selling bumming about a lot and not really doing anything. Bastards. So I'm back in the market, having waited all last year to buy in the run up to Xmas and save myself a few quid (houses on the same road are going for £15k more than they were in Nov/Dec) I've now lost that and just need somewhere with no chain as soon as possible so I can stop shelling out rent on this place.

Fucking house.

Hope everyone's well, anyway.

March

2006-03-01T00:05:00.000Z

It's spring!

I've just been outside and it's minus 2.

Marvellous!

$500 for 1000 pixels!!!111oNe!!!

2006-02-28T00:39:00.000Z

Dog my cats, what an amazing offer that is. Unfortunately, I've becoem quickly bored of hearing about it, so I've had to turn wanky word verification on for comments. I realise this will probably reduce my comments by 75% (cos it's a pain in the arse tbh), but I've bitten the bullet, so there.

In other news, I'm back at work after a three week hiatus. It's quite nice to be back, but it won't surprise anyone to learn that my sleep pattern over the last two weeks hasn't been following it's agreed peak efficiency timetable. If I was more awake, I'd invoke some sanctions against it to try and deter the tricky little shite from pissing me about in future, but he know's I'll never follow up any threats I make, so there's no point angering him. Instead, I'm holding an eye open with one hand whilst typing with the other. That'll teach him. Fatherhood is treating me very well, and I am still all teh grinning proud parent. From some angles (at 3am after an hour of trying to get her to settle down after feeding) my grin may look like a bit of a grimace, but I assure you it's not. I just don't have very good teeth. Blame my dad.

Anyway, thanks for all the lovely messages/comments recently, It's lovely that you all think such nice things. I note NO-ONE has sent me any expensive malts yet, but I assume this is just because you're all busy choosing the perfect dram to celebrate baby Islay's arrival. Don't rush. Regular TV advertising has told me it's worth the wait. While I'm on the subject, welcome back to mr Biohax who has re-surfaced from web-obscurity with a very snazzy new site design and climbed back on the wagon after a Christmas slip. Keep up the good work and all that, not that you need telling. If only cos I want to know where that uber-cool clock came from on your site. So I can steal it and claim it as my own*.

I'd love to go on with an interesting and informative/controversial political discourse or focus on an interesting bit of current affairs news, but to be honest, since the baby arrived, I've paid piss all attention to anything happening outside my front door (apart from the rugby, stoke winning - I kid you not - and posh baby wipes being bogof at Tesco). So I'll just stop typing now, give my eye a rest and claw ope the other one to make sure the UK's financial networks are still chugging away as they should be. If they're not, you might not hear from me for a... while...

*fact

WANTED: For kissing, cuddles, and possibly marriage...

2006-02-25T19:19:00.000Z

GET THE FUCK IN YOU BUNCH OF FUCKING BEAUTIES!

Time for drinking. See you all soon.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/rugby_union/international/4745130.stm

Apologies...

2006-02-17T22:01:00.000Z

...for the short hiatus. Please feel free to hum muzak to yourself until normal service is resumed.

Everything's going marvellously, I'm thoroughly enjoying being daddy, and baby Islay is gorgeous and angelic. We all managed about 8 hours slepp last night, which is a miracle. We've found she sleeps very happily if we have Smiths albums playing quietly in the room, so that's that sorted. Bless her.

Her favourite track is That Joke Isn't Funny Anymore.

Nighty night everyone. Hope all's well. Take care...

Islay

2006-02-13T17:40:00.000Z

Islay Hannah

2006-02-13T17:34:00.000Z

It's a girl! Islay Hannah, born today at 12.23pm. Mother and baby doing fine.

The last couple of days

2006-02-10T09:59:00.000Z

Have been very average indeed.

Those with good memories will remember that yesterday was the day we were booked in for consultation at the hospital, and hopefully we would have a date set to be induced. (Baby is 6 day overdue now). We got a call late on Wednesday afternoon, saying that we couldn't go on Thursday, because they didn't have any doctors.

Whoa.

It's a hospital.

/obvious

Seriously though, w made this appointment 4 or 5 months ago, because they told us we'd need to go in SOON after the due date because the mrs is quite small and baby won't fit if they leave it too long. So THE DAY before we're s'posed to be going in, we get a call saying, "ooh, can you come monday instead?". I was livid, and stomped around at work a lot.

Then, on wednesday night the other half's waters borke. "Hooray!" we thought, and ran off to hospital again. So they poked about and shone their maglite up places and said apparently her waters haven't gone. So fuck knows what all that water was that came out of her. Ah well.

So we got home about 3, and I finally got some sleep. Then we were up at half 8 on thursday, because we'd booked the mrs in for reflexology (Witchcraft and playing with feet - to make the baby come out). In a little village near Glossop. She was very nice, and I took some photos of the pretty scenery around, while the mrs had her feet rubbed. It seemed to do the trick, to apoint, cos she had lots of painful contractions all afternoon/evening, but they never got quite regular enough.

So now it's this morning. Whill we get a baby today? I doubt it. But unless something happens, we'll be off to hospital on monday. And I've got a gig monday night! (We'll have to see about that, won't we).

Bugger.

Hope all's well with everyone.

Edit - Thanks for all the nice comments recently btw. Muchly appreciated. xx

Politics!

2006-02-08T16:39:00.000Z

Politics. ~~It’s all bollocks~~ It’s quite important.

Anyway, I won’t go into my own worldview too much, cos they’re not really very interesting. And neither’s this actually, but read on if you’re bored or supposed to be working.

So yes… umm… so in yesterday’s post I received my voting paper and pre-paid envelope for the Liberal Democrat’s leadership election. And you know what? I’ve absolutely no idea who to vote for. So I asked my mum (gawd bless ‘er). And I thought I’d give you a transcript of our conversation.

Disclaimer: this is me, having a conversation with my mum (She’s 58, married, with one child – misself – if anyone’s interested), so we might not use very politically correct in our language. And we may both not be very interesting. But it’s my blog, so ner.

From: DrCrawley
To: DrCrawley’s Lovely Mum

My ballot paper has arrived for the Liberal leadership election.

I've really no idea who I like best. Any thoughts before I fill it in? All welcome.

x

From: DrCrawley’s Lovely Mum
To: DrCrawley

I thing Menzies Campbell is too old! He's been going for ever and I think the party needs a bit of new blood after all their troubles, so I think I'd vote for Huhne (?) except that I like Simon Hughes and would have voted for him if you can be sure how prejudiced the rest of the world is. However I don't get a vote as I've never been a member of a political party! You do have a vote so let me know who you vote for. I have to say i can't see what all the fuss was about Charles Kennedy. I always knew he was an alcoholic, so where was everyone else and why didn't they know too!

xx

From: DrCrawley
To: DrCrawley’s Lovely Mum

Everyone knew about Charles, everyone knew about Mr Hughes as well, so I don't really see what the fuss is about with either of them. But I spose having Charles all red faced, sweating and obviously not well at times when he was supposed to be doing important things didn't help.

I like Menzies Campbell, but I think you're right about him being old, but the thing that really puts me off is the fact that every time I've seen him on telly recently with his glasses on, he always seems to be staring straight into the camera and looks like a rabbit in headlights a bit. He sounds OK on the radio, sometimes a bit boring and hesitant, but he always looks so presidential in still photos. And I like the idea that he used to be an onlympic athlete, and that he's Scottish obviously helps too. But I don't think I could give him the vote.

Simon Hughes was nearly my favourite at the start (anything but Oaten, but it seems that doesn't matter any more!) because I recognised him (always a good start) and he seems confident without being a blair or a cameron clone, speaks clearly, and seems to have common sense. As you say, I'd definitely vote for him for the party, but I don't know if I could see the general public voting for a party with him as a figurehead. Of course, there's always a chance you might get the 'gay vote' from the whole country, but that doesn't seem that likely really. And would negate any effect that had anyway. Oh but he's Welsh.

Chris Huhne is the youngest (by three years - he's only 51!) but still looks old enough to be a police officer, unlike Mr Cameron (I know, I know, I'm young, but I'd rather vote for someone who looks a bit older than me!). Like everyone, I've never heard of him, but I like that he's a former city economist and guardian writer bloke. He might know how to handle the press a bit? I like that he's a a normal(!) person who's done a normal job for most of his life rather than being a politician. And he seems to speak very, very, very well, although I've not seen him on telly. And he is a bit funny looking.

So like I say, I don't really know!

I have to put 1 2 and 3 in the boxes, so at the moment, I'd say Ming is going to get my 3 (sorry), and 1 and 2 is split between the other two. But I still can't decide. I'm sure there's a way I shold be voting tactically, but I don't understand that at all, sadly.

The BBC site says:

The Lib Dems use the single transferable vote system, where members list preferences and votes from the least popular candidate are reassigned to others. This lasts until a winner - with more than 50% of votes - emerges.

Which makes some sense.

So maybe Huhne 1st, Hughes 2nd? I'm lucky I'm not Dyslexic, I wouldn't have a hope with those two!

x

So there we are. I hope you've enjoyed this little insight into my life. Any suggestions of who to vote for from you lot are welcome, athough I'll have to decide and post it out soon. To be honest, I'd be quite happy with any of them, which I spose can only be a good thing!

/politics

Right. You can carry on with your work now.

Baby news

2006-02-07T17:19:00.000Z

Evening peeps. Firstly, don't get excited. Nothing's happened.

Baby is currently 3 days overdue. Or LATE, as I prefer call it. (s)he's going to get a clip round the ear when (s)he finally arrives for keeping mummy and daddy waiting. We don't do waiting. We're both incredibly impatient at the best of times, so this is really not going down well. I'm currently stuck on permanent days (which are bad enough anyway), but there IS some light at the end of the tunnel, in that we've got an appointment at the hospital on Thursday. So with a bit of luck, they'll induce her there and then.

Oh, and band have got a gig on Monday, so fook knows how all these things are going to fit together. It's our biggest gig, in a decent venue, with decent remuneration and everything. So doubtless baby will turn up mid afternoon on Monday and we'll have to cancel. it's not quite as rock and roll as Babyshambles, but the comparison seems fairly appropriate.

Driving

2006-02-07T07:43:00.000Z

Driving. Always driving. Always on the move. He knew what freedom was. Freedom was an open road, a full tank, no particular place to be, no deadline to meet. Sometimes day, sometimes night – always on the move. Traveling was surely the ultimate freedom of this 21st Century. Communication had it's upsides, it was a wonder as long as you particularly wanted to be contacted. Sought out. Found. Located. Tracked down. Trapped. That was the last thing he needed. He was trapped enough already. Work. The bank. The bills. The Marriage...

Traveling was everything he needed in life, the only downside was the possibility of arriving. It was his goal, he supposed, that ultimately he should arrive – obviously, without an ultimate destination, he may as well have stayed at home and saved the fuel. Or just parked somewhere indefinitely. Somewhere with a nice view.
Margate had been nice. Not the best place all year round, but that morning he'd spent, car parked (probably illegally) at the top of the beach, watching the sun rise over the English channel at 5am as a summer's day dawned, still cool, almost pollen free, clear as a bell, and with only the footprints of a single dog-walker disturbing the blank canvas of the coarsely-sanded beach. It felt like a perfect moment, that hour, spent watching the water. With every minute that passed without the interruption of dreary civilization on his day-dreams, he felt a renewed vigour for life, a new freshness, building up in tangible steps which he savoured, knowing that it could never last, and consciously appreciating the extension of the moment in the hope that he'd be able to recall it in less happy times to come.

To this day he was glad he'd made that effort. It made even the most dreary of journeys a pleasure – the possibility of a completely unexpected moment of bliss. A true arrival, apart from the standard day-to-day destinations of job interviews, meetings and all that unbearably tedious 'jazz'. Thanks to that morning, he knew that wherever (if anywhere) he was heading, there was always the possibility of something wonderfully unexpected.

He utterly adored surprises. So much so that it didn't seem to matter whether they were good or bad ones. He remembered in the past the pure excitement he'd felt when sat at his desk one morning he heard rumours round the office that the company had run out of money and everyone was being laid off. Granted, the end result had turned out to be a bit shite, but the excitement he'd felt in the day leading up to it had shocked many, upset some, and surprised even himself. Anything different to “the usual” made his heart beat faster, and his skin prickled with anticipation.

In the absence of surprises, he was still at his happiest traveling, driving onwards, to wherever, whoever, and whatever may cross his path. With the exception of the Margate morning, and a very few other occasions, it was the journeys he remembered. Along with the sense of anticipation, the capsules of people's lives you could see, and sometimes take part in during one journey. So many lives for such brief periods of time. Most would never be aware of his presence at all, others would share a glance, occasionally a wave of gratitude. His love of meeting new people, a genuine, innocent enthusiasm to be friendly to people never before encountered, perhaps to cheer himself up, perhaps to brighten another's day. It very rarely did any harm, either way. Very very rarely.

If he had a weakness, he had to admit it must have been his slightly chauvinistic (by modern standards) fondness for the ladies. A pretty girl was much more likely to be greeted with a friendly smile, and some calculated braking and headlamp-flashing when trying to exit a side road. An attractive dog female dog walker on a pleasant spring morning was often liable to cause significant distraction, which, fortunately, had only ever resulted in one very embarrassing collision with a red Ford Escort. Belonging to a Vicar.

He was acutely aware that these thoughts would result in him being considered a “filthy greasy perve” by many, and to a certain extent he was inclined to agree. But what harm did it do (apart from to the vicar), beauty was, surely, there to be enjoyed in all it's forms – be it a summer's dawn over a still ocean on the south coast, or a supermarket assistant stacking shelves in Morrisons. Yes. Chauvinistic indeed. But in a non-sinister, friendly way that kept him happy.

This particular subject was a cheerful looking brunette in a white Vauxhall Astra, waiting to pull out of a particularly ingenerous side-road, armed with wind-swept long hair, and little in the way of hope or expectation of continuing her journey before sunset. An open palm offered, a flash of lights and a winning smile. The smile returned with interest, and a look of genuine relief. She catches his eye, waves thank you, and is gone in a moment. Traveling in the opposite direction to who knows where.

The moment replayed in his mind giving him a buzz of real gratification. A little of the voyeur in him, he accepted and welcomed. Perhaps Vauxhall Astra brunette would like a little of the voyeur in her? “Ha ha, Oscar Fucking Wilde”, he muttered with a little disgust to himself as he rounded the corner and turned into his road.

He did occasionally worry about having these in-depth conversations with himself. But then if he was convinced of his own sanity, surely this would be the first sign of true madness. There, at the end of the road was home – an arrival perhaps – a destination, certainly. And so here he was, back home, and no longer traveling.

Face:Off

2006-02-06T15:23:00.000Z

Face Transplant Woman Braves Cameras for News Conference

Does anyone else think she looks like Abi Bartlett, First Lady of The West Wing?"

Or maybe it's just me...

Oh yeah

2006-02-06T07:22:00.000Z

I managed to gouge a chunk out of my face the other night, bending down to move a draft excluder in the night, and accidentally skewering my jaw on a pointy plastic thing that used to have a roller blind in. Mmm. Jagged plastic at 3am on a Saturday morning. Pointy. So I look like a boxer at the minute. Hurrah. I am all teh hard bastard.

Sporty sport!

2006-02-06T07:13:00.000Z

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/rugby_union/international/4674072.stm

Stonking result in the egg chasing yesterday. I got thoroughly battered on Sainsbury's Imported Spanish Lager whist watching it at home. Great stuff. 'course, now we've won one, we'll crumble under the weight of expectation now and lose the rest, but still, one win's better than no wins.

No sign of baby yet, due date came and went. He/She's now 2 days LATE, which just seems rude.

For anyone who's wondering, my slightly less-than-brilliantly executed point about democracy was that more people should vote, and many of you 'orrible lot probably don't. So do. If you don't vote, you don't get to pick who does, so if you don't agree with their choice, you're bummed. Or something. Anyway, hopefully baby news soon, cos I can't hack all this awful, horrible waiting.

Oooh, one last thing, I notice two of my favourite blog people seem to have disappeared in recent days/weeks.

Biohax and Laputain.

Hope you're both ok, and come back soon!

Edit: Laputain, it seems resurfaced yesterday without me noticing. Oops! Bad Dr c.

BNP pair not guilty of Race Hate

2006-02-02T16:51:00.000Z

Story here.

Hurrah for democracy! Not the crap kind of democracy like they have in America where you can't be a politican without talking about god all the time, but the free speech, equal rights for all(ish) democracy like the UK's supposed to have.

OK. The BNP stand for a lot of things that right-thinking moral modern citizens dislike, I would certainly never vote for them, and disagree with most of what they say, but that doesn't mean they don't have a right to say it. It annoys me the way whenever a BNP candidate does well in local elections, the BBC always vilify them, and ask why democracy has gone wrong? It hasn't gone wrong, the local BNP canididate in those areas have done well because they represent the views of a sizeable number of the constituents. Small minded, uninformed constituents, maybe, but people who've at least bothered going along to vote. And now they've been cleared of these charges, I await more indignation calling them racists and what have you. I'm not condoning racism, but they still have a right, in this free society to have those views.

I forget who, and the exact words, but didn't someone once say something along the lines of "I don't agree with what you have to say, but I'd die for your right to say it".

Discuss.

Confessions

2006-02-01T07:17:00.000Z

I'm easily bored...

[ ] I'm afraid of the quiet.

[X] I am really ticklish.

[ ] I'm afraid of the dark

[ ] I'm afraid of facing my back to open doors at night.

[ ] I am homosexual.

[X] I believe in true love.

[X] I've run away from home.

[ ] I collect comic books.

[ ] I shut others out when I'm sad

[X] I stayed out all night.

[X] I open up to others easily.

[ ] I am keeping a secret from the world.

[X] I watch the news.

[ ] I own over 5 rap CDs.

[ ] I love Disney movies.

[ ] I am a sucker for blue eyes.

[ ] I don't kill bugs..

[X] I curse once in awhile.

[ ] I have (had) "x"s in my screen name.

[X] I've slipped and fell in public.

[X] I've slipped out a "lol" in a real conversation.

[ ] I love Spam.

[ ] I bake well.

[ ] I have worn pajamas to class.

[ ] I have owned something from Abercrombie.

[X] I have a job.

[X] Talked on a phone for 5+ hours.

[ ] I love Dr. Phil

[X] I like someone

[ ] I am guilty of tYpInG lIkE tHiS.

[X] I am self-conscious.

[X] I love to laugh.

[X] I have tried alcohol.

[X] I drink alcohol on a regular basis.

[X] I have tried a cigarette.

[X] I have smoked a pack in one day.

[ ] I loved Lord of the Flies.

[ ] I have cough drops when I'm not sick.

[ ] I can't swallow pills.

[X]I have a few scars.

[X] I've been out of this country.

[X] I can't sleep if there is a spider in the room

[X] I love chocolate.

[X] I bite my nails.

[ ] I am not comfortable with being me.

[ ] I play computer games when I'm bored.

[X] Gotten lost in the city.

[X] Seen a shooting star.

[ ] Had a serious surgery.

[X] Gone out in public in your pajamas.

[X] Have kissed a stranger.

[X] Hugged a stranger

[ ] Been in a bloody fist fight with someone of the same sex.

[X] Been in a fist fight.

[ ] Been arrested.

[X] Laughed and had some type of beverage come out of your nose.

[X] Pushed all the buttons on an elevator.

[X] Made out in an elevator.

[X] Swore at your parents.

[ ] Kicked a guy where it hurts on purpose.

[ ]Been skydiving.

[ ] Been bungee jumping.

[ ] Gotten stiches.

[ ] Drank a whole gallon of milk in one hour.

[X] Bitten someone.

[ ] Been to Niagara Falls.

[ ] Gotten the chicken pox twice.

[X] Crashed into a car

[ ] been to Japan.

[X] Ridden in a taxi.

[X] Shoplifted.

[X] Been fired.

[X] Had feelings for someone who didn't have them back.

[X] Stole something from your job.

[X] Gone on a blind date.

[X] Had a crush on a teacher/coach.

[ ] Celebrated Mardi Gras in New Orleans.

[X] Been to Europe.

[X] Slept with a co-worker.

[X] Been married.

[X] Gotten divorced.

[X] Saw someone/something dying.

[X] Driven over 400 miles in one day.--

[ ] Been to Canada.

[X] Been on a Plane.

[X] Seen the Rocky Horror Picture Show.--.

[X] Thrown up in a bar.

[ ] Eaten sushi.--

[ ] Been snowboarding.

[X] Been skiing.

[X] Been ice skating.

[X] Cried in public

[ ] Walked purposely into traffic with your eyes closed.

[X] Liked someone even though you knew you shouldn't have.

[X] Thought of someone almost 24/7

[ ] Hated the world.

No excitments

2006-01-31T17:38:00.000Z

I'm in at work this week. On days instead of nights, so I can be covered if I have to run off for baby duties.

No baby news. No house news. Stuck at work on days with sparse web access. Life's a bit tedious and cack at the moment. Ah well. I've made a decent start to my novel (secretly), at least. 2000 words today. Hurrah for literary adventures when I shoudl be working!

Politics

2006-01-28T18:18:00.000Z

Seems my local chinese takeaway has nailed their colours to the mast with regard to the forthcoming Lib Dem leadership election. Odd really, I never had them pegged as liberals, what with all the swords and stuff...

Game!

2006-01-28T10:24:00.000Z

I'm not usually a fan of online game type things, apart from iSketch, but that barely ever seems to work for me any more.

But this is ace. It uses the flickr database and you have to guess the tag, basically.

Tis very good. Go play. Thank me later.

eBuyer suck big floppy donkey cock

2006-01-28T09:38:00.000Z

I promised you this rant about my laptop-buying a while ago, but I saved it at work and haven't been in since I wrote it. So in the absence of any baby-related excitment, have this. Enjoy...

Customer Value

Right then. [Grumpy mode activated]

Ok. *deep breaths* I've done many jobs in my time that I would call 'customer service' jobs. I've run my own businesses twice, amongst many other things, and I think that customer service is very, very important. After all, customer's are the life blood of any business. I expect customer service levels to be basically polite at worst, but this should permeate right throughout the company. Everyone should be resoponsible for putting forward a good face of the company they work for when corresponding with their customers. Most obviously though, the 'customer service representatives'. You know, the scutters on the shop floor who have to answer the phone all day for £5 per hour. Aren't we customers lucky - the people paid specifically to be the face of the company and help us with out problems and enquiries are the one's who aren't paid enough to care, and for poverty spec wages who can really blame them?

Anyway, onto my rant. ebuyer. God bless 'em. I'd heard some bad reports of their service, but generally they seem to have improved over recent years. I also know where their office is as I used to play football just round the corner, which, for some reason gave me added confidence. So I ordered the laptop on Sunday night. Paid extra for next day delivery so I'd get it on Tuesday, and spent all of Monday getting excited. Late on Monday afternoon (after 4pm), I received the following email to my work email from eBuyer.

Dear Dr C,

Order Number: ########

This order has been cancelled pending the receipt of further information.

To reactivate your order please fax copies of the following documents to 0870 467 5001:

1. Passport/Driving Licence

*AND*

2. A Utility Bill Gas, Electric or Council Tax

If you have any difficulty faxing these documents please contact our customer services team via enote or by telephone on 0845 146 1720.

Once received and verified, the order will be reactivated.

Regards,
Ebuyer Customer Services
http://www.ebuyer.com

Riiight. I re-read it a couple of times, to make sure it wasn't some kind of elaborate joke, then called their customer services department to see quite what they meant by "we've cancelled your order for no reason, so ner". It transpires that because I'm a new customer to eBuyer (I'm not, I've just moved house since I last ordered), and they've had 'fraud issues' with addresses at or near my post code, they can't send me stuff without me faxing/emailing proof of ID. I'm a reasonable not-doctor, so I swallowed this, and offered to send the nice girl an email with a scan of my passport whilst still on the phone to her, to help speed things up and hopefully so I'd receive my Lappy next day still, seeing as I'd signed up to pay for it with extra super next day priority delivery. "Oh,. sorry mr customer", says the lady, "I'm afraid it'll take 48 hours to process your ID, so we won't be able to re-establish your order until then. Then we can ship it next day to you after that, but if you keep an eye on your email you'll get a message when your account's been re-activated".

I think my next words were "you're joking?". Followed closely by "well, I'll have a look and see if I can get it somewhere else next day then, cos I did pay extra for next day delivery because I want the item QUICKLY, so if I can't get it somewhere else then I'll get back to you". "Ok then sir." says the girl and hangs up.

Lost for words to be honest. Anyway, I managed to get a better model, with a 1.6celeron processor (I really wanted the AMD, but hey ho) and a gig of ram for £520 from Curries, (http://www.comet.co.uk/comet/html/cache/289477.html but special offer) and I walked out of the shop with it in half an hour, so that's good news. I buy nearly everything online, and have done for a good few years now, and this is the first time I've been pissed about. But I won't be buying from eBuyer again, so hopefully it won't be a problem!

[grumpy mode showing inactive for 34s.....]
[grumpy mode showing inactive for 35s.....]
[grumpy mode showing inactive for 36s.....]
[grumpy mode showing inactive for 37s.....]

End.

No news is tedious news

2006-01-27T18:56:00.000Z

Had a gig last night, which was both marvellous and splendid. Teh Mrs came, and after I re-appeared from the stage she suggested we go, and when we got to the car, mentioned that she thought her waters might have broken a bit. Long story short, they hadn't, but I never realised how amusing a midwife carrying a maglite could be. Details would be innapropriate, but funny. We've been out shopping all day today, so nothing very exciting to report. I've just ordered a curry, and the mrs is having quite strong contractions again this evening, but that's nothing unusual really...

Proper post tomorrow, when I'm back at work for the first time in a week! (Unless baby appears, obviously)

ta ta...

Life goes on...

2006-01-24T09:08:00.000Z

Morning groovers. I've calmed down quite a lot since Sunday, as the mother in law (who rushed down on Friday, to add to my woes) has gone home again, I've spoken to work, and had a band practise. I've also cooked some curries, which I found quite theraputic.

Over the weekend, in an effort to keep the out-law occupied, between bottles of wine, we went to lots of lovely plces for long walks. I'll stick some photos up in a wee bit for everyone's enjoyment.

Hopefully baby will turn up very soon. No sign yet though, and we've tried EVERYTHING.

Edit: Here we go. You can see some pictures all mini and small in the sidebar, or you can click here for my full artistic load to be shot, enthusiastically, across your monitor.

Eeew. Sorry.

Livid

2006-01-22T08:38:00.000Z

Well, I'm assuming it's a girl, because it's got the map upside down or something. It's certainly showing no signs of making an appearance. I wouldn't mind, if it wasn't for the fact that the midwife told us that he'd be here very, very soon the other night, and to try and grab a couple of hours sleep ifwe could, and then get ready. I know the human body isn't an exact thing, but she really didn't need to say this when she could have said other things, like it still might be weeks or days. I've now used up my paternity leave for nothing. Which is not good, and I'm incredibly fucked off. I know it's no-one's fault really, but still.

Very quick update

2006-01-20T10:11:00.000Z

Spent from 1am - 5am ish in hospital last night. Baby's trying to get out, but he's not quite here yet so we're back at home. The Mrs was 2cm dilated at 2am (sorry, too much info, I know), so there's not really any going back as I understand it. Doctor C Jr is imminent. Eventually. Soon we think. More info as soon as something happens!

House update

2006-01-19T10:37:00.000Z

I'd almost forgotten. I spoke to the estate agents' "progress centre" yesterday to see what's going on with the house, and they say the contracts are all ready to be signed and stuff, the thing that's holding it up, is that the people selling the house to the people selling us their house haven't found a house yet.

!

When we put the offer in, we were told everyone above us was sorted and just waiting for us, so we're a bit p'd off to say the least. Got more important things to worry about for the noo, but still. Very annoyed. Waiting to hear this news from the solicitor and then we'll kick off and find out what our options are. Agents are putting pressure on him to find somewhere fast, so maybe he could be persuaded to go into rented accommodation or something. It's not our problem obviously, it's the people above us who'll be desperately trying to sort it out. But it's still annnoying. Bastards.

Excitements!

2006-01-19T06:59:00.000Z

Hurrah! I am all teh web god.

Instead of clunky old http://drcrawley.blogspot.com DrC's blog denizens may now approach me from a slightly more trendy (slightly!?) angle, via http://www.drcrawley.co.uk. Go on. Click it. I know you're dieing to. See? It works! Hussar!

Quality item that.

Secondly, the Mrs has been having contractions for five days. No sign of Jr though. Little git. We want him now and am very impatient. The worst part is, I've not slept for more than 2 hours at a time since Sunday. Cos whenever a contraction comes in the night it's met by a squeal, a wriggle, and a punch in my ribs. Cheers love. Some of us have got to be up at 5:45 to go to work. Doesn't help that I'm subconsiously timing them in my sleep, so if they're close together I get dead excited and think baby's on his way. No such luck. Had a show yesterday, which is a start, but I just want baby cuddles now.

Anyway, carry on you lot. Some of us have got work to do.

oooh, don't let me forget to tell you why I'm going to post mouldy dog turds to eBuyer.com though. I'll write it up later on.

Happy monday

2006-01-16T06:41:00.000Z

I'm off home to bed in a bit. If anything interesting happens, I shall endeavour to let you know as soon as I can. In the meantime, have a smashingest week.

Not smoking. What a good idea!

2006-01-15T23:44:00.000Z

13 days without smoking. So, roughly, in 13 days, I've not smoked 312 fags, and not spent £63.83. No wonder I was always skint, is it!

To celebrate, I've bought myself a laptop. How rare.

Cheers to the pampered coo 'oop in god's country for the suggestion. Again!

Fitba

2006-01-15T01:47:00.000Z

I meant to mention yesterday, although it pretty much goes without saying, Stoke lost again. We're shite at the minute, and no mistake. This is far from cutting-edge revealing journalism I realise, but we're bobbins. We need to sort out our back-room situation, bring in a couple of full-backs, and hopefully a competent finisher before the end of the January transfer window.

But we won't, so I'll just go back to sleep until the F1 season starts again. Ach well.

I wouldn't normally do this kind of thing...

2006-01-14T23:23:00.000Z

...but Laputain made it look interesting, so I thought I'd give it a go meself, like. It lifts the mood from yesterday's politico action too. Right we are then...

7 things to do before I die:

Have room to store at least 3 cars easily on my own property
Write a novel
Record a full-length album, AND have it ditributed!
Play proper 11-a-side football again
Be asked to appear on the radio for some reason
Have a wikipedia entry about me (it doesn't count if I make it myself, so I'm not going to)
Be invited to appear as a panelist on a TV show - like HIGNFY or something

7 things I cannot do:

Play the drums properly
Stay in touch with everyone I care about properly
Be unfaithful
Complicated sums
Tolerate fools
Ever be satisfied
Think of a seventh thing

7 things that attracted me to blogging:

Self-obsession
The fact that I'm appauling at keeping a diary for more than 4 days
Lots of spare time at work
Reading some blogs properly and deciding blogs generally rock
The prospect that things I say MAY interest SOMEONE somewhere
Keeping up with absent friends on their blogs
Keeping a record of things for myself

7 things I say the most:

cocks!
shitting shits!
'k
'lo
you're joking?
gissa' minute
in unrelated news...

7 books I love:

Something Happened by Joseph Heller
A Big Boy Did It and Ran Away by Christopher Brookmyre
Making History by Stephen Fry
The Man on Platform Five by Robert Llewellyn
A Certain Chemistry by Mil Millington
Microserfs by Douglas Coupland
She Stood There Laughing by Stephen Foster

(Note - Buy all these, they are all fucking quality)

7 Movies I love:

Army of Darkness
How to get Ahead in Advertising
Grosse Pointe Blank
Brazil
The Hudsucker Proxy
White Christmas
American Psycho

In unrelated but exciting news, baby is 37 weeks old today, and therefore 'full term' as of today. So (s)he's cooked, and can come out whenever he wants! I'm hoping monday or tuesday. Please.

also, free mp3 rock music band silverstone action

Best blonde joke ever...

2006-01-13T22:33:00.000Z

Tom Reynolds at Random Reality has discovered the best blonde joke EVER.

Chortle.

2006 - Year of Idiot being in Charge of Superpower - Again...

2006-01-13T19:27:00.000Z

Part two then, of Dr C's preview of the year ahead, and today I've been struck down by a dangerous threat to world peace, and something to do with the World Cup.

If you're not in the mood for venting of tabloid-style political outrage, then I'd suggest you skip to the end now for news of the baby and my general life and ignore me briefly turning into Piers Morgan...

President of the US George 'Dubya' Bush today had meetings with new German Chancellor Angela Merkel, and said "Iran, armed with a nuclear weapon, poses a grave threat to the security of the world". More of a grave threat, I wonder, than a simpleton being in charge of the world's biggest cache of nucular (sic) weapons. Recalling his attitude to Iraq leading into the inevitable 'Iraq War', his 'War on Terror' (I'm still not completely sure if by this, he means 'War on Islam' or 'War on people controlling Oil apart from me and my pa') and his attitude to UN Security Council Resolutions, I'm sure I'm not the only one who will be noticing some worrying similarities between his current view on what he calls 'The Iran Situation" and what he most likely referred to as 'The Iraq Situation' before he turned Baghdad into a parking lot.

I'll start in the beginning, and just look at the bloke, smirking like an idiot. What a twat. Really. He looks almost as stupid as he sounds. It's almost unreal. They really do have a different way of life over there - imagine David Beckham being made king and Prime-minister over here, only stupider. I can't believe it would happen. I could go through his whole speech today, analysing every little idiotic segment, but I won't bother. "I'm not going to pre-judge what the United Nations Security Council should do. But..." - Bless you George, what a great way to start (if not a little predictable).

I particular enjoyed this little exchange:

"Q Thank you, sir. If I could just follow up on that. China's U.N. Ambassador says referring Iran to the Security Council might complicate the issue. How hard is it going to be to get a --
PRESIDENT BUSH: Say that again, Steve. I'm getting a little old. I'm getting old; I'm having trouble hearing.
Q China's U.N. Ambassador --
PRESIDENT BUSH: The Chinese Ambassador said what?
Q It might complicate the issue if you refer Iran to --
PRESIDENT BUSH: Might complicate the issue?
Q Yes, sir -- of how hard it's going to be -- what's your timetable? Should the sanctions include the threat of military force?
PRESIDENT BUSH: First of all, I want to repeat what I said before. We should not prejudge the strategy..."

What can one say?

Anyway, my favourite bit is where he outlines Iran's secret plan to build lots of nasty nucular (sic) warheads and, presumably, a-splode Isreal and some other places and maybe even Merca.

"...sending a common message to the Iranians that it's their behavior -- trying to clandestinely develop a nuclear weapon, or using the guise of a civilian nuclear weapon program to get the know-how to develop a nuclear weapon is unacceptable."

Riiight. I'm no expert, but I would have thought the last thing you'd do if you were trying to be clandestine about your Nuclear procurement, would be to have a civilian nuclear weapon program. What are civilians going to use nuclear weapons for anyway? Pressing particularly stubborn flowers? Tsk. Silly Muslims.

But, in other news, it seems everything's going to be ok after all, cos apart from the prospect of a vengeful idiot with a giant army, and possible UN sanctions, Iran are apparently at risk of being kicked out of the World Cup. Mmm. That'll teach them. If only they'd thought of that in the 30's instead of letting Hitler have his own Olympics, all those lives could have been spared.

Mercy.

Right. I'll stop now. I've presumably bored you all to death enough for one day. So take care and what-not.

By the way, unborn DrC Jr is fine and kicky. The Mrs spent the day in Leeds today, and felt her first proper Braxton Hicks contraction thingy on the train. All very exciting, thanks for asking. I'm back on nights again, and still not feeling 100%, although I've finished the anti-grotics so theoretically I should be well again, right? I'm not complaining though, cos I've had an unexpectedly quite nice pay rise. Which is marvellous.

2006 - Year of Sport!

2006-01-10T11:14:00.000Z

Well, in the absence of anything exciting to write about (gig tonight, so far this week I've basically slept and taken my tablets!) I've turned my thoughts towards sport. (And I've even gone to the effort to insert some rather enjoyable links, so enjoy!

2006 should be quite good. So far, Stoke have managed to not crash out to frail lower-league opposition, and have, instead earned an excited replay against local heavyweights, Tamworth, of the Conference league. There's a world cup to look forward to, which none of my supported national teams will be competing in, so no disappointments brewing there (unless England actually win, which won't happen). The tennis season should actually be quite interesting for the first time in about 50 years, since great white jungle-critter 'Tiger Tim' has been seamlessly usurped by a surly Scottish teenager with a grain of personality. Interesting because young master Murray might actually do quite well, and also that perhaps with the pressure off, 100+ year old Henman can put down his clenched fist-swingy arm machine, and just play tennis, My theory is, he'll either be shit as always, or he might actually do very well out of the spotlight. You heard it here first. Formula one should be great this year, cos I love it so much. I loved it when it was shit, and now it seems to be getting better again, so I'll continue to love it. Specially with a new crap team to support, filling the void of my Arrows fan-ship which has been left empty and inactive since the nice Mr Tom Walkinshaw accidentally cunted up his finances to the tune of putting the famous Arrows F1 team out of business in the space of about 6 weeks. Cheers Tom. The only high-point of that was that I actually got a nice message off Paul Stoddart on ITV-F1 ask the boss night, thing. Course, he's gone now too, as has Eddie Jordan, but my spirits are lifted by the prospect of team Super Aguri crashing lots, and making arses of themselves to great humorous effect. Aguri Suzuki was hilarious. Here's hoping Andrea Di Cesaris buys a team ready for next year and Max & Bernie's road to nowhere can be re-billed as a destruction derby event. Class.

I think I've rambled enough now, so I'll stop. Goooran Stoke! Up the mighty Potters!

Note: For anyone who didn't click the Henman link, click here now. It's actually worth bothering.

Also, enjoy team SuperAguri F1's stunningly professional and vivid website here.

Oh yeah, further to Mansun-dominated comments, I've been trying to guage my thoughst a bit. Six took me a long time to get into. I initially listened to it end-to-end about 5 times, wasn't that struck, and filed it away. It was a good year or two later, when I found myself driving from Hertfordshire to Stratford, in my old Capri, in the rain, with ony one CD in the car that I listened to it again. And fell in love. It's a story from start to finish - for me, it doesn't work as a collection of songs, and has to be approached as one big work of art. Oh yeah, and it's got Tom Baker on. Little Kix is a little lightweight for me, but still has some high points. Kleptomania I'm still getting to grips with, but it's only really CD1 that needs evaluating so I'll get back to that at some point. grey Lantern I've not listened to for ages. It's a near perfect album in it's own right, but few people really dispute that anyway. it's just doesn't have the depth of Six, for me.

Nighty night then...

Edit: I very nearly forgot. Ummm.. many hours/days without smoking. I am all teh good boy. :)

Right then

2006-01-06T06:17:00.000Z

71 and a bit hours without a fag. 11 straight 12-hour night shifts. 3 Amoxicillin capsules.

I'm hoping to spend the next 24 hours or so in bed, so I won't be all that communicative. At worst, I'll be back next Friday when I'm back in on nights. Likely I'll find a spare few minutes before then to pass comment on some uninteresting events, or world affairs. I expect you'll all be perched on the edge of your seats.

Have a good weekend. Wish good things for Stoke on Satdee. We need all the help we can get!

Take it easy chickens...

Mentalist

2006-01-06T01:42:00.000Z

Apparently my personality can be summed up using these little lines:

Advanced Global Personality Test Results

Extraversion	\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|	73%
Stability	\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|	50%
Orderliness	\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|	40%
Accommodation	\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|	50%
Interdependence	\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|	50%
Intellectual	\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|	56%
Mystical	\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|	50%
Artistic	\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|	50%
Religious	\|\|	10%
Hedonism	\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|	43%
Materialism	\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|	70%
Narcissism	\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|	56%
Adventurousness	\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|	50%
Work ethic	\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|	36%
Self absorbed	\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|	50%
Conflict seeking	\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|	56%
Need to dominate	\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|	56%

Romantic	\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|	63%
Avoidant	\|\|\|\|\|\|	30%
Anti-authority	\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|	63%
Wealth	\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|	36%
Dependency	\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|	43%
Change averse	\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|	36%
Cautiousness	\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|	56%
Individuality	\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|	50%
Sexuality	\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|	63%
Peter pan complex	\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|	43%
Physical security	\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|	56%
Physical Fitness	\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|	64%
Histrionic	\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|	56%
Paranoia	\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|	50%
Vanity	\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|	63%
Hypersensitivity	\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|	70%
Female cliche	\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|	56%

Take Free Advanced Global Personality Test
personality tests by similarminds.com

Dunno what any of it means, but it's nice to know I fit into some nice pre-defined groupings. Some of it certainly rings true. Vanity 63% is a bit modest, I think. Religious 10% is about 9.9% above what it should be, but you can't have it all, can you. Apparently I use my looks to get what I want.

Maybe that's where I've been going wrong. At the minute I tend to use money, and amazon.com...

God I'm bored!

*cough cough cough*

Told you I was ill

2006-01-05T19:47:00.000Z

Not bird flu afterall though.

After not sleeping much this morning, and coughing my way through last night's shift without really stopping, and then virtually drowning on my own lung-juice this lunch-time when I should have been sleeping I decided I'm actually properly ill. After a quick self-diagnosis, I decided I had pluerisy. Not being a doctor though, I thought I'd best ship off down the clinic, which the mrs kindly arranged while I coughed mini-octopus-babies across the bathroom floor.

Luckily, I got in to see the real doc at 3, he took one look at me, listened to me cough, and had a quick listen to my pneumoniccly-spasming lungs and told me I had brochitis. Bit disappointing, but at least it's something I'd heard of. This was the first time I've been to see the doc about my health for anything apart from footballing injuries for about 3 years, so it came as a shock that I wasn't wasting his time and to just go to a&e and ask for an x-ray. I've got some Penicillin things, a new inhaler, some lemsip and some vicks vaposyrup to try and get through tonight, then I can go home and have lots of lovely sleeps.

Then saturday I'm rehearsing, sunday seeing my folks and getting the dog back (yeeay!), monday rehearsing, tuesday gig, wednesday taking car down to Nottingham for an overdue major service. Thursday I'll be playing football, then Friday I'm back on nights.

I'm sure I'll fit some rest in at some point.

Edit: No cigs for 61 hours and counting. :)

38 hours, no smoking

2006-01-04T20:45:00.000Z

Marvellous. I'm feeling ok. Still feel poorly, and today has left me very tired, but I'm ok.

The plan for today was: Go home to bed, sleep from 7.30 til about 10.30 - then off to pick the Mrs up from Chesterfield Station, bring her home, then back to bed for me, hopefully from about 1pm til 5pm. What actually happened was: Home and paniced tidying til 8ish. Bed at 8ish. Woken up by next door shouting at each other aroun 9.15. Decide to cut losses and head out early to Chesterfield and look at some shops and stuff. (Can't sleep cos excited about Mrs' return). Arrive chesterfield around 10ish, check phone, have message saying "my train's cancelled". Skip forward to about 2pm - finally pick Mrs up from Sheffield station. Home for 2.45. I reckon 3 hours is the bare minimum sleep I need to survive, so I set alarm for 6.15 (as late as I can get away with) to try and get the minimum 3 hours, and get my head down by 3. By 3.05 I'm fast asleep. At 5 the mrs strolls in, plonks down on the bed and informs me she's not feeling well. Seconds later she's snoring loudly, as I fume about my ruined 3 hour sleep plan. At 5.45 I give up and stomp out of the house, get in the car and come to work.

It's now nearly 9pm, and I don't feel that tired yet. I can't help but feel it's only a matter of time though. And I still feel poorly - slightly better than yesterday, but I've got almost no voice and my throat is agony. All good preparation for band's gig on Tuesday. I'll be alright, we'll just have to do a load of Happy Monday's covers if my voice doesn't sort itself!

"Oh Pat, what have you done to me Pat"...

Smoking

2006-01-04T04:54:00.000Z

I feel a bit better than this time yesterday.

To celebrate not having had a fag in 22 hours, I've added a sexy lady weather thing in the sidebar over to your right. That should bring in the crowds.

Moan, moan, moan... vomit moan...

2006-01-03T19:13:00.000Z

Oooh, today's been a struggle. I was in bed by half 7 this morning, hoping to sleep through as late as possible. I was awakened by next door's shouting match at around 2, managed to get up, make some lemsip, be sick lots, and get back to bed by half 3 ish. Then suddenly it was quarter to 6 and I had to get up for work. Went to morrisons on the way to work to get some food, and my wobblyness let itself show as I managed to fall over by the salad bar. Bit embarrassing, but could have been worse, and didn't really hurt. I'm at work now, which is good, cos I can stay sat down and safe!

I've taken the opportunity of feeling shit to stop smoking though, which is very good. So far I've not had a cig in 12 hours. Hopefully I can keep this up, and that way I'll get well quicker, save money, and not poison baby when he arrives. Stay tuned, and if I don't post again, presumably I died and it was bird-flu!

Flu update

2006-01-03T05:48:00.000Z

I still feel poorly. :O(

I need hugs, sympathy and looking after.

/moan

Only three shifts left!

Man-flu

2006-01-03T02:34:00.000Z

I have a cold. Well, I don't have a cold, pobviously, cos I am a boy. Thus - I have the flu. Possibly Bird flu. In fact, I accidentally read the front page of the daily mail yesterday, which means I have three kinds of Avian Flu, no job security, AND my house's value is going to plummet in value before I've even moved in because the police are too busy taxing innocent speeding motorists when they should be out catching real criminals.

Or something.

Anyway, I feel poorly, and being mid-way through my 8th 12 hour night-shift on the bounce isn't helping much. Still, only 3 left after this one.

Sympathy me.

Happy new year!

2006-01-01T00:34:00.000Z

Wishing all/any readers a happy and proseprous 2006, with minimal bad bits.

It's mental here, loads of work to do, cos of the phone lines being busy. I could go into detail, but I'm too busy. Enjoy, everyone.

Fireworks

2005-12-31T23:29:00.000Z

It's five to 11 on Dec 31st, and when I look out over the city, I can see and hear a constant stream of fireworks. Why!?

Perhaps the maligned 'literacy hour' in our primary schools would be better replaced with an hour of teaching people how to tell the time.

Work, work, work

2005-12-30T20:03:00.000Z

4 shifts down, 7 to go. Hurrah for overtime. I got my first really decent day's sleep today, which is encouraging for the rest of these shifts. Normally 4 nights is the most we do in a row, (7 is the most I've done back to back since starting the job) so after the 4th you have to try and get your body back into it's natural circadian rhythm. Not so for me. I went to bed at half 7, and woke up about half 3, which is just right for me, and I feel ok for the first time this week.

Played with camera this morning, and it is truly brilliant, but I'll wait til I get some daylight to take proper pictures and then maybe link a couple.

What did turn up in today's post was a bit exciting though. One of these critters.

Mainly cos I've been getting arthritis in my right wrist this winter (I'm in my early/mid twenties, remember) and I play football (in goal). So in order to give me a chance at continueing the latter despite the former, I've invested in the best finger/wrist excercising thing, ever. My right wrist hand is knackered after 10 mins playing earlier, and I just can't get a rhythm right in my left wrist yet (which is horribly weak and needs building up). I've brought it to work though, so that'll amuse everyone ~~cos it'll look like I'm wanking whilst making whizzy noises~~.

Work

2005-12-29T06:49:00.000Z

Had a really busy night at work tonight, which is just ending. I'm knackered, but also dead excited cos my new camera may be arriving today according to the parcelforce tracker.

Yeeay!

Oh yes. Yes, yes, oh yes. FAME.

2005-12-28T01:36:00.000Z

Dr C has made it onto google.

Type in "Whitwell Woods" and see who's second only to the Forestry Commission. Go on. I dare you.

Me.

This.

Hoo-ah.

That's made my day, that has.

Two, possibly three things:

2005-12-28T01:09:00.000Z

1. I've fixed the barrier! Hurrah! I am now a hero. Quite simple really, I swiped my card to make it go up, listened to the motor straining, then kicked the barrier itself upwards very, very hard. I fell right on my arse on the ice (silly maneuvre, now I think about it) and the barrier whizzes up to about 1/4 of it's usual height, then crashes back down. Lovely. It'll do me, anyway.

2. I just read this: NeeNaw - The Bad Samaritan - fantastic, and utterly true, I'm sure.

3. Which reminded me of something great I missed out earlier. On Xmas eve, me, the Mrs and her family went to Durham Cathedral for the carol service. I'm not a religious person, and nor are they as far as I know, but it's a nice thing to do, and it bumps up my middle-classness enough to tide me over til spring at least. And a funny thing happened. We were sat in a pew, singing along, and one of the people behind us (a mid-teenage girl) was singing the descant (different, higher) part to O Come All Ye Faithful. At the end of the song, the mrs' mother turned, and very, very, VERY politely and apologetically asked the girl if she could possibly refrain from doing so for future songs, because with the mixed ability of other people singing in the pews around, it made it very difficult and confusing for less musical people to sing the normal bit (like mrs' sister youngest). The girl (all smiles) acknowledged the request and proceeded to happily sing the 'chorus line' for the rest of the evening. At the end, everyone stood to make their way out and home, and after the row behind us left, the girl's mother (apprently) turned back, tapped mrs' mother on the shoulder and said (and I quote) "Err, excuse me madam, but can I just say, that in 40 years of coming to church, I've *NEVER* encountered someone as rude as you. My daughter has a wonderful singing voice and you have ruined her day and my Christmas." The Mrs' mum stared back for a second, visibly shocked and just as my frayed fibres of self control were about to snap, allowing me to say "takes one to know one!" and stick my tongue out, mrs mum came out with, "But we haven't met? ... I'm Ruth". The angry god-botherer then left, hot, bothered and with her xmas thoroughly ruined.

This kind of thing is what makes me absolutely love the mrs' mum. She's great. What struck me most, is how stupid it is to let someone else upset you so much. Mrs' mum was shocked, a little taken aback, but still in very good spirits for the rest of the festival season, despite being confronted in front of her mild mannered family (and young daughter) by some mentalist, and rightly so. She would have been even more chipper if I hadn't accused her of ruining xmas for everyone every time she opened her mouth to speak. (I *AM* Oscar Wilde).

But why let someone else get you so annoyed as to ruin your yuletide for no good reason?

I fear the only person responsible for that was yourself, you cuntish* old hag. Perhaps you'll learn not to be such a twat in future?

*Regular readers will have, I hope, got used to my crap writing style and tendency to end long passages of flowery prose with a sweary bit. I like it, it's my blog, and so I make no apologies for it. Marvellous. Enjoy!

Back to work then...

'tis the season to be chilly

2005-12-27T23:38:00.000Z

Woo, yay and, indeed, hooplah. 'Tis me. I'm back. Did you miss me?

What a chore the last few days have been. Xmas was lovely, but from about Christmas lunchtime onwards I really wish I'd just been asleep. And today has compounded things. It's not all doom and gloom though, so read on kind sirs, read on...

Dec 22nd
Got up (after suitable amounts of grumpy prodding from the mrs) at silly o'clock for a non-work day (8ish I think), gathered belongings, dog and a few clean pairs of pants, and set of for the mrs' paternal grandparents house in the lovely lovely potteries. A double whammy for me, as Stoke being my spiritual 2nd homeland , and also I got to meet her dad for the first time ever. (He lives in New Zealand, which is a bit inconsiderate if you ask me). Managed the journey in near-record time, arriving in a cold sweat and, frankly shitting myself. Still, all good fun. Not all that surprisingly it transpired to be an enjoyable morning/lunch (it seems I'm approved of), and we then set off across the worst journey possible from Stoke to mid Lincolnshire. Whoever is responsible for the present layout of the arterial roads in that bit of England, in my humblest of opinions, wants a good fucking. Up the arse. With a pineapple. Covered in vinegar. If anyone tracks he or she down, I'd be glad to volunteer.

*thrust*
"people need to travel...
*thrust*
east-west
*thrust*
as well
*thrust*
as
*thrust*
fucking
*thrust*
north
*thrust*
to
*thrust*
south
*thrust*
you utter
*thrust*
cunt."
*thrust**thrust**thrust*

That'd teach him. The cunt.

Anyway, after about 4 hours of tortuous bumbling along shit roads (apart from the a50, which is one of my favourites) we arrived at my parent's house. Which was lovely. We were knackered, so only got thorugh a minimap amount of wine before we tumbled upstairs to bed, like excited children on christmas eve.

Which was fair enough, cos -

Dec 23rd
Silly o'clock again (but for a good cause) - It's Christmas!
Downstairs we potter to open presents and be very festive, whilst pup chews wrapping paper with gay abandon and studiously ignores anything bought for her consumption and smelling of chicken. I won't go through a seven-year old style list of all the lovely things I got (but I want to). I will, however mention one gift from my parents, which I will likely refer to later on in future blogs. It's a funky weather station thing not unlike this one (but not the same): Weather thingy - Mine is a bit bigger and better, but that's not important. Since (finally) getting home, I've been using it to monitor JUSt how stupidly cold our shit, uninsulated house is. Hooray for moving soon!

Anyway, we had a big festive lunch (again - yeeay!), then clambered back in the Crawley-mobile for another monster journey up the A1 to the mrs' family home oop in Darlinton. Arriving just in time for tea, we were greeted with warmth and festive cheer and then drank lots (well, I did - the mrs can't drink cos she's up the duff, like).

Dec 24th (Real Xmas Eve)
Christmas eve was fairly uneventful - highlights were seeing a young preacher-type bloke in town who sounded like Jimmy Nail (he was hilarious - I wanted to stick around to hear the ten commandments to see if they all ended in 'like,' but we were on a shopping mission and couldn't keep straight faces), and staying up til midnight watching the Dambusters with the mrs' step dad. Due to the congregation of family types sharing rooms, I was relegated to sleeping on the floor in the study, which was fine, until...

Dec 25th (Baby Jesus's Birthday)
The mrs has a (much) younger sister (she's 9), who's bedroom is next to the study. At around 5:30am she started padding around, which would have been fine, but the floorboards in her room were obviously very well connected to those under my head, so I was awake and there was nothing I could do about it. I'm all for rising early at xmas, but christ on a bike. Many sleeps required. (see a bit later). At 6 the mrs made an appearance, and dragged me through to her bedroom, where her sisters were sat waiting so they could tear at their stockings. Woo! Presents! Anyway, the rest of the day went as xmas does in most household (I presume) and after presents came lunch, and much lounging about feeling full. Yeeay! (note: I fucking love food). At around 7, I then left, and headed back home. This was ace, cos the a1 and m1 were both quiet as long, tarmac mouses. I was home by 9, and rushed to do all the things I'd been meaning to do for ages. Back up all pictures on PC, back up all software, music and documents on PC, reformat PC, re-install everything, hope works better and faster (it does!), browse web a bit, etc.

Dec 26th (Boxing Day - why's it called that? Clicky linky!)
I'd got it all back as it should be by about 4am, so I went on to install my present from the mrs' mum & steppy - Footy Manager 2005. Fantastico! Played that til about half 6 (am), then went upstairs to cold bed. At some point whilst waiting for XP SP2 to install, I'd remembered the weather station and set it up so the main receiver is in the living room, and the 'outside' receiver is upstairs in the (icy) bedroom. Current average temps without the heating on (inside) are: 11c in the bedroom, and 9c in the living room. Now as a human being I find this unacceptable. Fortunately using the central heating on full AND a fan heater pointed at me, I've managed to raise this temperature to a dizzy 21c downstairs and 16c upstairs for short periods. I'm told a house should be between 18 and 22 for comfort, so i feel new justification in my previous moans about the house. With just the central heating on full for 3-4 hours, the best temperature I've got in either room is 13c. God bless hot water bottles and the fan heater.

Anyway, I got up at about 1pm, and mooched about on the pc til 6, when I set off for work. ("Ah" I hear you think as you realise why I stayed up all night on Xmas day). Busy as fook - hence this being posted today. I spent most of the night looking at this site: DPreview specifically at this: Sony DSC H1 (well, I looked at lots of things, in great depth, but decided that's the best cos it looks nicer than the others). Anyway, long story short, I ordered one today (27th) and hopefully it will be with me before New Year shambles the post office up.

Dec 27th
Up at 2pm-ish, mooch about, go to tesco, nearly die due to incredibly treacherous road conditions, seque backwards past the war memorial at the bottom of the village hill on the iced snow carpet that's usually a road, make it to work (took over an hour, usual journey time 25mins), order posh camera, ring the mrs, nearly die of hypothermia going outside to try and let the council gritter into the work car-park - turns out the barrier is stuck cos of ice. Fantastic. Time will tell if it fixes itself before I go home at 7ish. Not that I'll be able to get home if Bolsover District Council haven't got their act together and GRITTED THE CUNTING ROADS. *sniff*

Ooh, blimey, look at the time, it's...

Dec 28th
now.

So far, I've typed most of this. Fingers crossed the day won't get any worse!

Toodles.

Dr C

x

Xmas Eve, Eve

2005-12-21T08:45:00.000Z

Hurrah! I've been off work for two whole day already. Tomorrow I'll be whizzing all over the country seeing various relatives of the Mrs, finishing up at my parents house, then on friday we'll be enjoying pretend early xmas with them, then hot-footing it further north to spend real Xmas with the mrs and her sisters. Should be rather enjoyable.

I also get to mee the Mrs' erstwhile goodfernuffink dad, who I've not yet met (He lives in New Zealand). Bit nerve-wracking.

Wish me luck, I shall most likely report back on boxing day.

Come on Steve!

2005-12-18T18:11:00.000Z

Go on Steve!

I've got a tenner riding on you , you bastard!

Last Work Day before Xmas!

2005-12-18T07:35:00.000Z

Oooh, Festivus approaches!

A funny thing happened to me this morning. Quite funny anyway.

Something I've not touched on in this before (at least not in any detail) is my own little psychosis. My cute little obsessive trait. I can't be late. Seriosuly, I can't handle it. I always say "I'd rather be an hour early than a minute late", which is true. More often than not though, two hours. I'm as likely to be sat in a car park smoking and reading my book 2 hours before I'm supposed to be there as I am to be on time. In fact I'm always 2 hours early for any long-distance appointments. And in the last 2 years in my current job, I'm not been late once. Not one second. My average is 20 minutes early. So that's good.

Picture the scene this morning then - Dr C sleeping quietly in lovely dreamy land, all snug and lovely, catching up on the crap sleep I've had all week.

*phone rings*

Me: "Hello?"
Co-worker at work: "Dr C?"
Me: "Oh... I'll be there in 20 mins"

Bugger!

It took me 26 minutes from my bed in the villages to my desk at work. So I was 26 minutes late. I feel all meek. Normally if I was looking at being a minute late I'd be all sweaty and panicing and VERY grumpy. Cos I didn't get a chance to do that today (as soon as I was awake, I was already late) i found it quite funny. When that wears off though, I just know I'm going to feel guilty as hell til my next shift (Boxing Day night) when I can make up for it by being an hour early or something!

Take it easy kids...

Evenin!

2005-12-17T18:06:00.000Z

It's been a very busy day today. Nothing particularly interesting, just busy. I can't wait to be asleep. I did have a brief read of a couple of good blogs I'd like to share though.

1. http://www.biohax.com/
My name is Phil. I was once an overweight (clinically obese) heavy smoking man who drank to much. I am now training to run the hardest marathon in Europe, the Snowdon Marathon ...

Says all you need to know I think. Go read.

1. Borderline Teacher

This is the blog of a teacher in the UK who has Borderline Personality Disorder. My ex-wife had that, so I found it particularly interesting. It feels rude saying that, for some reason, but it's true, and I guess that's what blogs are for.

Nighty nighty everyone.

RIP Leo McGarry

2005-12-17T10:27:00.000Z

BBC Entertainment News - John Spencer, the actor who plays Leo McGarry on TV's greatest thing The West Wing died yesterday. Tragic loss. Even the Mrs is upset. I'm just shocked just now.

'Safety' cameras

2005-12-15T11:18:00.000Z

Or 'scameras' as the more wittily-endowed members of the press have dubbed them in the past. My-oh-my, I feel a rant brewing. I might even go and have a relaxing fag before I continue this.

Hang on...

That's better.

Right. According to the popular media outlets this morning "The recent rapid rise in numbers of speed cameras on UK roads could be at an end" http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4530464.stm presumbaly news which will be greeted by most of the general motoring public with an outpouring of glee, and some predictable moaning about how unfair they are.

This *REALLY* (and I mean really) pisses me off. Apparently instead of more 'scameras' in future, calming methods such as chicanes and speed bumps may be favoured as they are less of a 'jolt' to road users. Hang on, is a little thing at the side of the road more or less of a jolt than a lumping great brick in the road, a 20mph restriction or a chicane!? What if you're driving an Ambulance? It's bad enough hearing from associates of how the greedy government have caught them speeding with their unfair cameras, but now apparently the cameras are too harsh for some areas. Apparently the govenrment "recognises the concerns of drivers regarding the cameras" and the general motorist view that they are criminalising innocent citizens in the persuit of their daily life. IF YOU DON'T SPEED it's not a fucking problem is it!? Slow the fuck down, you buch of twats. Seriously. If you're breaking the speed limit, then you're breaking the law, and if you get caught, then it's your own fucking problem, don't come bleating to me (or, indeed the courts) about how you need your car for your job. If it's that fucking important you should drive more fucking carefully.

Right. I'm going to stop now before I explode and go back to thinking about fluffy kittens and what-not.

No, no, hang on, I've just remembered this little GEM of a site ukspeedcameras

This is one one level, quite amusing, and another, it just frightens me that someone with such a disregard for the rules of the road can be quite SO self-righteous.

Some choice cuts for you:

"We are fed up with lining the pockets of police forces and councils as a stealth tax revenue raising scheme." - Stop speeding then

"We are not criminals, just drivers going about our daily business and we are essentially law abiding citizens.." - Clever use of the word 'essetially' there. I've just checked my pocket dictionary though, and I'm afraid you've slipped up there. Where you've used 'essentially' you meant 'not'.

This particular page is a work of art imho. The writer makes an example of 'stupid' road users, who are daring to drive at any speed lower than the exact limit. 55 in a 60? You want fucking, grandad. Right then. Convoys

"There are two slow coachers here. The lorry and the blue car. The blue car should pull over and let the others pass." - Mercy. I must have mis-read the part of the highway code that says "the speed limit is not a target". My mistake.

The next picture is priceless. There's a picture of someone opvertaking a queue of traffic on a bend(!) with the following editorial: "This is how it should be done. The white car moves over to the left giving the black car plenty of room to pass. All too often slower drivers move to the middle of the road to deliberately block faster cars."

I'm going to stop again now so I can have a drink and calm down again. It takes a lot to piss me off, but this is one of my absolute pet hates.

Take care all.

Consensus

2005-12-14T15:53:00.000Z

Me & the Mrs now officially HATE our current house, and look forward t0 moving with ultra-renewed fervour.

It's cold, and crappy. While preparing us a late lunch, the Mrs has just found a slug in the kettle. I'm taking solice in the fact that we cooked the little bastard, but she's feeling quite unwell and looking pale to say the least. Nasty business really.

Bit of front

2005-12-13T11:56:00.000Z

Took some pictures of a cold front heading in, on the way home from work Monday morning. Circa 7am.

With my phone.

Not bad quality are they?

Babies!

2005-12-12T03:20:00.000Z

I've just found, and done some reading of this excellent blog: babymother, and found myself getting all misty eyed and excited about baby (Due in 8 weeks, don't forget) for the first time in... oooh... 3 or 4 hours. I can't believe we're actually getting a little baby. I can't wait for the day I change the blog headline thingy to 'diary of a doting daddy', cos I bet it's all I talk about from then on.

I'll be a right boring bastard and I don't care one bit. :)

In other news, I'm knackered now. Even more so than before. My prior tiredness seems like a hazy memory, I look back on wistfully and think "did I really have all that energy?". The effort of pressing down each key seems a serious chore now, let alone actually paying attention to work stuff. Still, in 4 hours time (barring accident or serious injury) I'll be all tucked up and snoozing peacefully. Up at 12 noon to take the mrs to comedy fat-lady aqua-natal classes, then back home, possible more z's, followed by band rehearsal at 19.00hrs. God how I wish I could just sleep for 48 hours. But we've got a gig on Thursday, so it'd be best I turn up and we learn at least some of the new songs we're intending to perform. My voice will be shafted through tiredness, but I doubt I'll be that bothered.

Ref: Sleep (lack of) - I can't help thinking shift work is an ideal preparation for the early years of fatherhood. Time will tell!

It's Monday!

2005-12-12T02:14:00.000Z

Hooray! It's monday. Officially. It's been monday, believe it or not, for 2 hours and 14 minutes at the time of typing. Marvellous.

What this means:
I get to go home and sleep soon (5 hours ish), and I don't have to be back at work til Thursday. Which is just marvellous.

Have I mentioned how marvellous the fact that it being Monday is yet?

*checks*

Yes. yes I have.

Marvellous.

Thought I'd try this MobBlog lark

2005-12-11T22:19:00.000Z

I'm on the toilet.

Huge hairy big Explosions

2005-12-11T20:06:00.000Z

Today's been a very, very long day for me.

Oil Depots exploding, not doing my job to my usual high-standard, and the bairn have conspired to deprive me of enough sleep to function properly.

Chronologically then:

4am - something at work doesn't work quite like it should, although in an attempt to get me in bother, it looks like it IS working, so I carry on with other things. (is this starting to sound like Chernobyl worker's blog, 1987 yet?) 5am - it becomes apparent that it's not working quite as it should, although everything at this end looks ok, and it is working a bit, suggesting a possible problem elsewhere, so I contact elsewhere and ask them to check. 6am - elsewhere get back to me saying there's no problems, so I pap myself a bit, and call out for further assistance.
6.15am Somone comes into the office and says, "fookin hell there's been a series of massive explosions in Hertfordshire". Seeing as most of my closest friends live in Herts, I ask whereabouts? "St Albans". Right. Jim (who was the best man at my wedding) and his wife live there. More than a little concern from me, and searching the regular online news sites I can see nothing relating at all. 6.30am - Skynews.com start reporting a massive blast near St Albans and set me worrying more. I send Jim a text message asking if everything's ok, as well as one to my mate Bill who has just moved from hemel hempstead a couple of months ago, to another town about 20 miles North. Bill replies immediately saying he knows nothing about it. (It later turns out that the office he worked in before he moved has been almost totally demolished).
7am - everything at work is now fixed and running fine, I get a phonecall from the gaffer asking why I didn't spot it at 4am. (Although there was actually no way I could have known until 5am. Meh. I'm more concerned with other things. No word from Jim.

I race home, with 5 live on the radio (as always) hoping to learn more about what's going on. Eyewitnesses describe the blast as being apocalyptic, and the explosion has been heard as far away as Kent.

I arrive home at about 7.25, and dash into the living room to put the TV on, where BBC news are now showing amateur pictures of the fire, which is raging like a bastard o say the least. I manage to find the exact location of the depot, and figure out that it's about 2 miles across open fields to Jim's house. I'm slightly less worried having seen the pictures, as, although the explosion was obviously a massive one, it doesn't look like the destruction could have travelled that far with truly serious effect (I was half expecting to just see a 10-mile wide crater or something) so at about 8am I go to bed to get some much needed rest.

Over the next couple of hours while I doze, I receive the following text messages:

08:26: Jim
Sorry for the delay... News is all fairly clear now. We are safe... Can see it all very clearly from here. It looks like hell on earth, but we are safe.

09:39: Bill
FUCK. I used to work *right* next to that. It's enormous. Always reckoned it was a huge bomb waiting to go off. Only lived a mile and a half away too. No worries about waking me up mate - nice to know someone cares!

10:00 Bill
3Com* will have been demolished. Fuck.

*3Com is where Bill used to work.

I get up and reply to Bill telling him that Jim lives just across the fields, about 2 and a half miles away.

13:50 Bill
Probably be OK at that range*. My flat was half a mile away. Funny thing is how much hassle new owner gave me about the windows when she was buying!

Obviously, I woke up a lot more relieved than when I went to sleep. The explosion was heard by people in Holland. This is a disaster on an unprecedented peacetime scale really, and it eerily reminded me of the Piper Alpha disaster in 1988 - we'd just moved down from Scotland, having lived in a village near Aberdeen - an area where EVERYONE either worked in, or knew someone who worked in the oil industry. Our old next-door neighbour had damadged his knee badly playing squash, and as a result wasn't on Piper Alpha that day - the guy who covered his shift for overtime died. I had a few texts from my dad as well - he used to Work for BP in Hemel - working on the construction the Architecturally famous BP offices. At the moment I can't answer his question as to whether these offices have been damaged as I'm not really sure exactly where they are in relation to the depot. My folks are in Hong Kong for the week on a well-deserved holiday.

Further to last night's mummy/baby/hospital action, we had to go back today to pick up a prescription. The pharmacy closes at 2pm, so we had to hot foot it over as soon as I got up. We made it, just, and came home, then I headed out to a band rehearsal and now to work. I'm completely exhausted, but mainly releived that everyone I know is alright, and it sounds like deaths have been averted - surely a miracle given the extent of the blast.

Looking at the pictures, I'm still getting a shiver down my spine. I've not spoken to Jim yet - he seems very busy today, so I'm just hoping he's not picking up bits of his house and looking sad.

Edit: Some updated links:
Flickr Buncefield Pool
Wikipedia: 2005 Hertfordshire Oil Storage Terminal Fire

Why bother? /sulky angsty teenager type - First Published Sun Dec 11th 2005

2005-12-11T20:01:00.000Z

2:13 am

Oops!
I just put this as a comment further down, but it was meant to be a proper post.

Although I'm obviously aware that no-one but Geoff actually reads this, I do wonder what sort of person (if any) would actually enjoy it as a read. I personally love work-related blogs, my two fave at the moment being:

http://randomreality.blogware.com/ & http://parkingattendant.blogspot.com/

I wonder if someone who didn't know me at all would find any of this even remotely interesting. I'd assume not, although I'm fairly sure I'd find most people's blogs interesting to a degree. Mind you I've got fuck-all to do most of the time haven't I!

Panic Over! - First Published Sun Dec 11th 2005

2005-12-11T20:00:00.000Z

12:01 am

Panic over!
No baby. Just got back to work.Blood samples and stuff taken. All seems ok. Still none the wiser as to pains and stuff, but mother and baby are catching up on some sleeps now.

Actually, mother isa texting me with worrying hints about marriage, but baby, fortunately, is tucked away in mummy's tummy dreaming whatever he dreams of. Probably the impending disappointment of Stoke City supporting. Poor mite.

Blimey! - First Published Sat Dec 10th 2005

2005-12-11T19:59:00.000Z

8:29 pm

Blimey
Right. I'm off to hospital, cos the mrs is in a bit of pain that could be labour. 32 weeks. Bit scary. Hopefully I'll be back in a couple of hours. More soon...

Shift Work (II) - First Published Sat Dec 10th 2005

2005-12-11T19:58:00.001Z

7:41 pm Shift work
I started writing this early this morning, but then ran out of time so I saved it to finish tonight. So bare with it at the start, cos I’m repeating myself a bit. Nothing serious, mind. And there’s a point to it all, so read on!

Morning all. Sorry I've been quiet. I've been really quite quite quite busy tonight. Mainly going through various mortgage docs and stuff. (Ho ho! Bet you thought I'd been doing work for a second there! Silly you. As a point of reference, I managed to 'do' my own divorce whilst on a run of three night-shifts. Much easier to focus on working out legal documents when you know you're getting paid and should really be doing something else! I'd learn some languages if I could be arsed!)

I promise I'll put a proper post up tomorrow (well, tonight really) when hopefully I'll have less admin to do! The reason for this quick post, is that I was just thinking how great shift-work is. I realise that 12 hour night-shifts from 7pm til 7am don't sound much fun, and the prospect of a 12 hour day shift from 7am til 7pm does send a bit of a shiver through even my black, hardened veins (especially on a weekday, when all the gitty 9-5ers are cluttering the office up), but bare with me - shift work is the best thing ever.

Think about your life (assuming you work reasonably normal orifice hours). And 'scuse the generalisations - I'm just trying to make a point here!

5 days a week you get up, sit in traffic for an hour or so, work for 7-8 hours, then you sit in traffic again, usually for longer until you get home. At this point you're exhausted, and fit for not much more than a bit of eating, crap telly and some lovely sleeps. You might go out for an hour or two to the pub, or even to play sport or something like that. You probably find that the time you spend between work and sleep is spent at a billion miles an hour trying to fit everything in before work the next morning, and you usually get not quite so much sleep as you need, but you struggle through thanks to coffee. For the other two days a week, you stay in bed for as long as possible, and catch up on jobs round the house, maybe go out for a drink - whatever you like. You spend, I reckon, about 40% of your conscious weekend time dreading monday morning. Sundays are for sleep, you stay in bed late, get up only when you really have to, and generally (if you're anything like I used to be) fall asleep mid afternoon for an hour or so. You wake up about 4 or 5 in the afternoon, and suddenly realise that all the shops are shut, and you've only got telly and some more sleeps to look forward to before you have to be back at work for another 5 days of rushing round. If you did bravely decide to go out during your two day weekly 'holiday', you found every other bugger was out too, the shops are full, every where’s busy. Why couldn't the bastard's have stayed in to mend the fence instead of getting in your way?

But there's more!

What if, god forbid, you need to visit a bank, post office, or doctor's surgery!? Imagine! Assuming you're a vaguely responsible employee like me, you'll probably try and arrange the trip during your lunchtime. (Although if you're off to the doc's you'd better hope you're allowed to take 4 hours for lunch every so often).

You can see where I'm going already can't you.

Here's an insight into a month (4 weeks, for ease of everything) of my lovely, lovely life.

Week 1: Nights
Monday - 7pm - 7am Tues 7pm - 7am Wed 7pm - 7am Thurs 7pm finishing at 7am on Friday morning.

Monday:
I get up fairly late in anticipation of a long night ahead (I consider 9:30 to be late) and then have a light day of whatever I fancy. Bit of shopping. Bit of telly. Any chores that need doing I do. Bare in mind I've had the weekend off too, so I'm probably quite chilled. I head off to work about 6, via the shops (for a can of red bull and a sandwich or something) and usually arrive at about 20 mins to 7. I then spend 12 and a bit hours at work – working as required, and filling in the gaps by reading various excellent blogs, sorting out any paperwork and bills I need to, and generally getting stuff done.
(Last night I found the excellent Traffic-warden’s Blog - http://parkingattendant.blogspot.com/ - great stuff).

Tuesday:
At 7am on Tuesday morning, I go home, in bed by 7:30, quick snuggle with the mrs, and usually asleep by 8. I generally don’t sleep that well after the first night, and usually wake up between 11am and 1pm. The others I usually sleep through til 2 or 3, which is plenty. I then have 5-6 hours of day to do whatever I fancy. Lazing about, some shopping if needed, wash the car, play with the dog, watch a bit of daytime telly. If I’m feeling sleepy, I’ll generally go back to bed between 3 and 4 for a couple of hour’s bonus sleep, or even just to sit in bed and read for a bit. Generally very relaxing and enjoyable. No room for stress in my life – I’m too busy lazing about. I have a decent meal around half 5, and then head off to work again. Repeat as required until Thursday.

Friday:
At 7am on Friday morning, I go home, in bed by 7:30, quick snuggle with the mrs, and usually asleep by 8. As it’s my last shift, I usually only sleep til around 12, when I can then get up and face the rest of the day as I please. If I choose to go out on the town, I know I’ll be full of beans at midnight when everyone else is starting to flag, so I’m almost guaranteed a good night. If not, I can watch crap telly, and go to bed whenever I fancy. I’ve effectively won a relaxed three-day weekend which I’ll enjoy lots.

Week 2: The shit one
Monday – 7am – 7pm Tues 7am – 7pm Wed 7am - 7pm
Friday – 7pm – 7am Sat 7pm – 7am Sun 7pm – 7am finishing at 7am on Monday morning.

This is the rubbish week, obviously. 3 days into 3 nights. 72 hours of work in 7 days. Nasty business. Obviously, the days are 7am-7pm. I miss the traffic, but apart from that it’s pretty much like a worse version of your 9-5 week. If I need to do anything, I’ve always got Thursday and Friday days free, but I’m usually knackered after working mon-wed. No matter how much sleep I get, it never seems enough and I’m tired as fook. I look forward to Friday though, cos I enjoy working the nights, I’ve got the days again to play with as long as I get a decent morning’s sleep, and the clincher is on Monday morning when I’m off home to my lovely bed, all you lot are just starting your week. Ha ha! Winner!

Week 3: Days
Mon – Wed off Thurs 7am – 7pm Fri 7am – 7pm Sat 7am – 7pm Sun 7am – 7pm

This isn’t a bad week. Mon-Wed off is nice and useful to recover from last week’s business and catch up with anything I’ve missed. Thursday and Friday days are a pain, cos the office is full of proles and generally not a fun environment. I’m also expected to look busy whether I have any work to do or not, which is a royal pita. Saturday and Sunday are much more relaxed though, and I generally get to listen to the Stoke game on the radio on Saturday. My mood this week is generally dependant on the result of that game. If it’s summer, I can usually sneak off to watch the F1 in the canteen on Sunday, which is another nice thing to do when you’re being paid to work. This week is particularly enjoyable because I’m looking forward to next week…

Week 4: Payoff for week 2!
Mon-Sun – Off!

Hurrah! I get one week off every month. How good is that!?

So the point I’m trying to make, basically is this – Every month, I only have to come to work 14 times. And they pay me 25% EXTRA for that.

My life fucking rocks.

Shift Work (I) - First Published Sat Dec 10th 2005

2005-12-11T19:57:00.000Z

5:42 am Shift work
Morning all. Sorry I've been quiet. Been on dayshifts or asleep for a week. I've been really quite quite quite busy tonight too. Mainly going through various mortgage docs and stuff. (Ho ho! Bet you thought I'd been doing work for a second there! Silly you. As a point of reference, I managed to 'do' my own divorce whilst on a run of three night-shifts. Much easier to focus on working out legal documents when you know you're getting paid and should really be doing something else! I'd learn some languages if I could be arsed!)

Anyway, despite my apparently sunny demeanour (I'm quite a laid back bloke, see) I'm actually quite grumpy. Office polotics at work have boiled over, and only 1 week after one of our merry band of 5 has handed in his notice, the other 4 of us are muchly annoyed at being ignored by our 'department' one second, then repremanded for not being 'part of the team' not 10 minutes later. More news to follow tonight, as the one of our number (only four of us now) is going to have a stompy whiney fit with the boss whilst on the dayshift. God speed to him, and here's hoping we all get fat pay-rises out of it.

Cynic? Me? Not a chance.

Hooray! - First Published Wed Nov 30th 2005

2005-12-11T19:54:00.000Z

5:43 pm Hooray!
Offer accepted. House off the market. 'Sold' sign winging it's way in the back of a Nissan Sunny as I type.

It's ours!

Now all we need to do is spend a protracted several months trying to make a certain amount of money pass from one person to another, and a set of keys to go the other way.

Marvellous!

Housey housey! - First Published Tues Nov 29th 2005

2005-12-11T19:53:00.000Z

10:59 am

Housey housey!
Viewed house last night and it seems to fit the bill so we've put an offer in this morning. Fingers crossed!

House Hunting - First Published Mon Nov 28th 2005

2005-12-11T19:52:00.000Z

9:53 am House hunting
Right! As we speak, my folks are on their way over, so we can take them to see this house. Then the mrs has got comedy fat-lady aqua-natal classes in Chesterfield. Then we're going back to properly view the house inside and stuff. So that's a good 150 miles of bumming about. I've got about a litre of diesel in the car, no money, and nothing to eat...

My mate... - First Published Sun Nov 27th 2005

2005-12-11T19:47:00.000Z

3:01 pm My mate
'noon all. Writing about me is easy. I dunno why I never thought of it before!
Since my old schoolchum Geoff http://www.livejournal.com/users/geoffrodriguez/ has:

a: inspired me to start this thingy
b: kindly linked to me from his blog
c: referred to me as an 'interesting character' (he knows I'll be enjoying the ambiguity!)

It got me thinking about friends.

I feel very privileged to have a good number of people I consider friends, but when i think about it, I realise how many different kinds of friendship I have.

There's the standard friendy stuff - someone you see all the time, always end up going out drinking with, etc. What you might call a mate in the standard sense of the word. It occurs to me I've only actually got one of them living up here. Which is quite weird I spose.

A lot of my best friends live down south, and some I've not seen for a couple of years or more, but I know that if I saw them tomorrow we'd just pick up exactly where we left off and it'd be like the old days again. Which is great. But I don't speak to them as often as I'd like, and I really wish I could see them more. Fortunately, teh interweb provides me with a means of communication that at least means some of them keep in touch. Occasionally. It's a two-way street isn't it!

Then (and bare with me here, cos it might sound a bit gay) there's the online friends.
Hello!? Wait, come back. I'm not that sad, I promise. Hear me out, if only to make your life seem better.

These ones come in three main groups.

1. People I already know who happen to blog/communicate lots via the web. - These don't count cos I've already covered them in the other bit above.

2. People I don't know from adam, but who's blogs I read with a desperate devotion. A prime example is "Reynolds" from the (almost) world-renowned http://randomreality.blogware.com - yes this is the sad category. I obviously don't know these people. but I feel I do, and I find myself saying things like "mate of mine is a magistrate and says this..." then realise I don't actually know their name!

3. If you're still reading, well done for persevering past that last one. You can stop tittering now. The third group, are people who I've met online, and then gone on to meet in real life. A prime example of this is all my mates form a specific UK Saab site/messageboard and the broader online saab community. At least one guy from there came to my wedding, and not many weeks ago, one of our number commited suicide, resulting in many people travelling from all over the country to his funeral. The fact that it was in Portsmouth, and people from as far afield as Aberdeen managed to make the trip says a lot about the strength of these 'online-to-reallife' friendships I think. And the positive effect all these people travelling so far had on his close friends and family on such a hard day was immessurable. A truly touching day, and a fine send off for a good (if obviously troubled) bloke.

Edit: I just found this picture of some of us up in Aberdeen in January of this year. We just got together for a weekend to tit about with cars and drink lots. 4 people who came drove up from Cornwall, one from Ireland. Madness.I'm 5th in from the right hand side, behind the orangeman, in blue overalls and a black hat!

I realise none of this stuff really means anything, cos it's just me rambling on about stuff, but it might at least make some of you realise how much difference little things you do for other people can make to their lives. Even just a little 'hello' email to someone you've not spoken too for ages can quite brighten up their day. It does me, anyway.

How profound! I'd best have a drink or something I think!

Ooh, also, I did a bit of a tally and worked out that amongst my friends, the most popular name by a country mile is Matthew. How weird. I obviously get on well with them.

Blogs - First Published Sun Nov 27th 2005

2005-12-11T19:46:00.000Z

9:10 am Blogs
Although I'm rubbish at it, I do enjoy reading blogs. There are a few I read religiously, so here they are, for your further enjoyment and pleasure:

http://randomreality.blogware.com/

http://briansbriefencounters.blogspot.com/
http://www.neenaw.co.uk/
http://thelawwestofealingbroadway.blogspot.com/
http://jonsjailjournal.blogspot.com/
http://criminalsolicitor.blogspot.com/

These are all VERY VERY good, imho. Looking at the subject matter contained within them, I can't help wondering if maybe I'm subliminally acheing for a career change? I quite like what I do, tbh, as the nature of the work often affords me time to do things like this, rather than anything like 'proper' work. I'm a lazy bastard really, aren't I.

Whitwell Wood - First Published Sun Nov 27th 2005

2005-12-11T19:45:00.000Z

8:59 am Whitwell Wood
Just re-reading that entry, and looking at the wikipedia entry for Whitwell, I remembered that Whitwell wood is the largest wood in Europe.

Now, how does that work then?

What makes it a wood, not a forest? Cos Sherwood forest is only about 10 minutes down the road, and that's far bigger. As is the Black forest in Germany, which is literally huge. So if Whitwell wood's so big and clever, why is it not in fact a shitty small forest? I don't know. I spose I could look up the differences between woods and forests on teh interweb, but that would probably just disappoint me.

Got a band rehearsal tonight. Straight after work at 7. Marvellous. Particularly good, cos my car is still FULL of bloody drums from Friday's gig. Which is a bit wanky. Can't help the fuel economy, can it?