A Long Time Gone

Once again, I return to your screens. Yes, it’s been five weeks since I last wrote and five weeks since more of you read & liked what I wrote than ever before. You would think this level of unsolicited testimonial would have dragged me back sooner. Normally, it would, but these past few weeks have been filled with nothing but hell, torment, financial stress, jury service and, after a gap of about 9 years, overtime.

Come with me, if you will, as I share my April 2011 with you.

Let’s get the worst out of the way first.

How Stupid Do You Think We Are?

As I told you all last time, I don’t often resort to anger in my blogs. It doesn’t really make for an entertaining read and I usually walk away from the keyboard angrier than when I sat down. Nonetheless, when you are sitting in front of your TV and see an advert from those nice people at Kelloggs proclaiming that our long wait is over and we can now get our hungry mits on mini Shredded Wheat with jam in the middle, you do wonder where it will all end. Many years ago, I ate a Pop Tart and such was the sugar and chemical rush, I believed myself a member of Kool and the Gang for over an hour. Only the intervention of a close relative stopped me from actually “Getting Down On It” in a place where neighbours could see.

People my age don’t need so much sugar and kids probably don’t either. My dad didn’t even approve of Sugar Puffs. Mini Shredded Wheats with Jam in would probably drive him to complete distraction. He never really got over the fact that you could buy bread sauce in a packet.

Next time I am shovelling  un-sugared Bran Flakes in to my diabetic, overweight body, I will think of those doing the same with jam filled nonsense and thank god that I have an angry fire in my soul that pointlessly rallies against this sort of thing in a blog that about 20 people read. Most of me will  be jealous as hell but just to be on the safe side, I think I’ll stick to my fibre and roughage for now.

Service

Those of you have undertaken Jury Service will appreciate how vague I have to be in describing my three days of civil responsibility. To be honest, it was a bit of a bore and not at all like you see on that universal standard for us all, Television. The first Monday dawned. I rose, completely overdressed and after a bowl of jam filled mini Shredded Wheat, I stuffed almost of all the required paperwork into my coat pocket. There would be more than adequate financial compensation for my trouble, but this would not extend to paying for parking in a busy city all day. A bus it was then. The bus stop is only 5 minutes from my front door, so with about 20 minutes to spare and a growing sense of terror at the unexpected fortnight ahead, I set off.  4 minutes later and I found myself standing at a bus stop with several people who, on a good day, aspire to be the dregs of society. I say “standing with”, but I was actually standing far enough away to give the impression that I might just be looking for my lost pocket watch in the gutter. The game was up of course when the bus arrived, but by then they were trying to shepherd their horrible offspring onto the bus and had no time for the smart bloke who looked shocked at the fact that 20p wouldn’t get you into town these days.

The 48C

Where I got on the bus is fairly near the start of the route, so it was just me and my bus stop companions for a few stops. Gradually, the bus filled with more of them and finally, about half a mile from town, I was forced to share my seat with someone who, until now, I have struggled to share Plymouth with. Their concept of “half the seat” needed some examination, as did their standards of both personal hygiene and inhibition. “Get away from me you greasy-haired witch”, screamed the voice in my head but better sense prevailed and I busied myself with staring out of the window and trying to ignore the toothless hag’s reflection, gormlessly doing the same.

You could say that I am picking on an easy target and falling back on that age-old British habit of pointing fingers at those who are slightly different. You would probably be true but I do wonder why the people I point at seem to be showing off about it. Part of me begs them to stop talking their nonsense or, better still, stop talking completely.  When will they understand that we don’t care about their conversation and actually find it quite annoying to have to listen. Before you all let me know, I do realise that they won’t.

By the time we reached town, the bus was full, loud, hot and stupid. There were 4 O Levels on that bus and they were all mine.

I exited on Royal Parade, far too quickly than politeness would suggest and only slowed down to walking pace about 50 yards down the pavement.

I don’t like buses.

In common with most ex-pupils of my school, I am ridiculously early for everything but,   thanks to non-nonsensical bus timetables, it would be at least 10 minutes before I was ridiculously early. I could actually see the court building, so I had no fear of being late. Only a coffee could fill the void. Now, some of you may work in a big city and will appreciate the temptations that surround you. In addition to refunding my bus fare, I was to be paid £5.71 subsistence allowance per day. It wasn’t even 9am and I had already spent £2.50 on a small latte and a paper. This was going to be an expensive fortnight.

With 10 minutes to spare, I found myself and several others outside the side entrance to the court building. After establishing that we were all there for the same reason, much very British small talk took place and time passed very nicely. 9.20am came and went, but nobody had let us in. With the world-weariness of someone who had done the same thing very other Monday, a young man leaned out of the window and told us in no uncertain terms that we should be at THE OTHER side entrance. Sure enough there was another one and after a thorough security check, we found ourselves in the Jury reception room with about 40 other upstanding members of the community. I had left the most important documents at home but it didn’t seem to matter. What did bother me was how many people had a big pile of books and/or a laptop. It never occurred to me that such things would be allowed. On re-reading the leaflet, the instructions could be so interpreted but not by me unfortunately. After a quick introductory video and a talk by the chief usher, we waited to be called. With only a small pile of old magazines and a muted TV showing Sky News, the time crawled by. Seriously. I had read 3 copies of Private Eye, had a good stare at everyone else, written their life stories in my head, thought of at least 12 things to blog about (soon forgotten) and even had a quiet doze, only to look at the clock and see I had only been in there 35 minutes. If there is one thing sure to make time drag, it’s the idea that someone will need you at any moment. Finally, at about noon, 20 good people were taken away and not long after, all but 12 returned. They were told to come back tomorrow and we were told not to come in tomorrow and just to call in at 6pm to enquire about Wednesday.

At 6pm on Tuesday night, the answer phone message told us to come in on Wednesday. At about 10am on Wednesday, we went down to the court and I was selected to the jury.

Lunchtime

We broke for lunch at about 12.50 and after using almost all of my subsistence allowance on a sandwich and a coffee, I went outside to sit with the good people of Plymouth. Unfortunately, I was to be disappointed as the good people were all somewhere else. The courtyard outside The Civic Centre was bathed in sunlight (unlike in the photo) and full of people. I finished my sandwich and coffee in about 5 minutes and then wondered to myself what I would do for the next hour or so.

Then I smelt a pasty. Then I saw the bakery on Royal Parade. Then I went and bought one. Along with a diet coke and a donut, I had now spent almost £8.00 that I couldn’t claim back. This was going to be an expensive fortnight.

I ate the second course of my lunch on a bench overlooking the pond you can see in the photo. I was on the bench in the bottom right hand corner. For reasons best known to himself, a bloke was playing (I am sure that’s not the right word) with a remote controlled tug boat in the pond and nudging an un-powered model oil tanker around. It was fascinating to watch and very impressive.

42 minutes to go…

I went for a walk up to The Hoe and by the time I got back to the court, I only had to 17 minutes to spare. I think Plymouth city centre is in some sort of time warp.

Court business sped past and we were released at about 5pm.

That was it. The end of my Jury service. Part of me was a bit sad but, financially, I was probably better off getting back to work the next day and returning to the normal swing of things. I could have not been so lucky and ended up with a case that dragged on for weeks, I suppose, but I had seen enough of civil responsibility in 2011.

Kerbing My Enthusiasm

Regular readers will be more than familiar with my Rover 214. Sunday last, things took a turn for the worse. It seemed so simple. Take mum to breakfast at Royal William Yard and then tidy up the garden, do some ironing, tidy out my bedroom cupboards and generally do Sunday things.

An Unrelated Photo

On the way to Royal William Yard, I drove into a traffic island. Over a week later, I have no idea why or how it happened. Perhaps something caught my eye. It doesn’t really matter any more because it happened. The impact wasn’t that terrible – just a hard thud as the driver side wheel hit, followed by another as the back wheel hit in roughly the same place. The car bounced quite high but I wasn’t hurt and neither was mum. We scraped to a halt a bit further up the road. On first inspection, it looked like I had two burst tyres and nothing much more. The RAC arrived and he seemed to agree. He took both wheels off and we drove in his van to Kwikfit, a short distance away. We jumped the queue, as only an RAC man can, and £132 poorer, we drove back to the car. After both wheels were re-attached, it was quite obvious that the bottom of the car was completely f**ked. I could moan at the RAC bloke but the truth is, I should have spotted it too.

To cut an already long story short, on the advice of my local garage, I scrapped the car the next day and got £90 for it. The keen mathematicians amongst you will already be writing in red and you’d be right. To be honest, I have been using that red pen since I bought the car in July 2007. Tax, insurance and petrol aside, I have spent about £2000 repairing it and I would certainly have gone throwing similar amounts at it had this not happened.

After a week of taxis, buses, dodgy car dealers and endless on-line searching, I now have a Vauxhall Vectra. It seems fine but time will tell. The Rover cost me about the same and lasted 4 years. Hopefully, this one will do the same and cost a little less. In the meantime, I have to get used to new controls, a new seat and a car that feels like it weighs twice as much as the last one. Oh yeah, and it’s a 1.6 so the tax is bloody expensive too.

In a fitting, and appropriate smack with the 2011 reality hammer, I was none-too-pleased to be charged £25 by Halifax Car Insurance for changing the car on my insurance policy. This growing trend of charging “admin” fees is getting to be a real pain. It’s not the first time in recent years this has happened. They would no doubt blame the current economic climate but I would suggest that in the current economic climate, they should be grateful for the £330 I chuck their way each year. In amongst that exorbitant fee, I assumed there was already a considerable amount of “admin” fee.

Total, Complete Bastards

Over month ago, I was having a good day. It was a Friday, it was sunny and I was off to spend the morning with a good chum. She was on the way back the doctors when I arrived and I thought it would be a good idea to park outside her house and then walk to meet her just up the road. As it was hot, I threw my coat in the back of the car, tucked my wallet into my left trouser pocket and my phone into the right one. At some point in the next 10 minutes, my phone fell out of the pocket. Whether this was on the pavement or during my quick visit to the corner shop, I don’t know. For all I know, someone could have nicked it from my pocket in the shop.

Over the next hour, I retraced my steps time and time again. I went into the shop and asked and I even took everything out of the car. Nothing. The phone was gone. As it was locked, anyone finding it would have no idea who I was, but part of me hoped they would hand it into the shop or the police.

Work time came and thanks to Google Latitude, I was able to ask one of my four closest colleagues where my phone’s GPS indicated it was. For those of you who don’t know what Google Latitude is, it allows me to let chosen people see where I am on a Google Map. It sounds intrusive and stalkey but actually its just a bit geeky and harmless. In this case, I hoped it to be bloody useful. Curiously, my friend Tiger’s phone showed it to be about 2 miles away and after a quick refresh of the data, it showed up in Victoria Park, about 2 miles further on. After a moments consideration, it was obvious that the bastard who had picked it up had just driven past where I work.

I could have gone to Victoria Park but even if there was only one person there, I am not the sort of person to accuse a stranger.

It was all moot by now as I had informed Vodafone of it’s theft and by the time we went upstairs to being the working day, my HTC Legend was a useless brick and of no use to anyone, bastard or not. Could they have cracked my password in the hour or so I looked for it? I doubt it. The SD Card was encrypted too. At most, I lost a few photos and about a year’s worth of text messages (I hate to delete).

Unfortunately, the month that followed was anything but smooth sailing.

The Police were fine. They freely admitted there was little they could do and that it was unlikely that I would get my phone back. Depressing, but at least they were honest. They supplied me with the required crime reference number and even asked if I had been traumatised by the event. I was a little, but I doubt any offered counselling would have helped much. I suspect I would have had to pay for it anyway.

The phone was insured by those nice people at Barclays. It doesn’t cost me anything as it’s included in my account fee. As the same £16 a month also covers my RAC membership (9 call-outs this year and counting) I have nothing to grumble about. Vodafone sent me a new SIMM immediately and all seemed to be well. Unfortunately, Vodafone haven’t responded to a single one of the many emails I have sent them in the last month. Not one. The call centre is a little better but, as always, the language barrier complicates things terribly. The SIMM card came in an envelope addressed to me but the despatch note mentioned some bloke in Bristol. “Thanks Ok”, said the call centre chappie, “all SIMM cards are blank. We can activate it to your number when you have your new phone.” Naively, I took this at face value. After four requests that Vodafone supply a written proof of purchase on letter-headed paper, nothing was forthcoming. Finally, and in desperation, I convinced Barclays to accept the one and only email Vodafone had sent me as proof. 1 day later, I had a nice new Blackberry Torch 9800.  Once again, in the spirit of the current economic climate, I had to pay an “excess fee” of £25. Excess of what? God knows.

Following another call to Vodafone to activate the SIMM, the phone stopped working. Just after buying the new car, my first trip took me to The Vodafone Shop in town and 3 minutes later, it was all fixed. A new car and a new phone inside an hour. It only took a month.

Being without a phone AND a car at the same time was a bit like I imagine life in 1950′s Cuba. You wander about, completely unable to contact the outside world. Quite why this feeling is so terrible, I still haven’t worked out, but it is. Before the car was

Cuba, 1950

wrecked, I used to drive home terrified – what if I break down? I even had to resort to reading a book at break time in work and walking around as everyone else had either popped out for a fag or was hunched over their little 3″ display checking out Facebook or Twitter. I felt left out and I felt like everyone was talking about cool things behind my back. How the hell did this happen? What turned me into some sort of paranoid nut-job wandering around the earth, fearing everyone and everything around me like a Russian dissident?

Looking for a second hand car is complicated ever-so-slightly too by not having access to the Internet on the move and not being able to ring the number of anything you find on-line. The realisation that you are in the middle of an nondescript housing estate with no way of contacting anyone you know and/or love or need is scary as hell. Also, things are a REALLY long way away. Bus Stops, shops and eateries that you speed by in the motor are REALLY, REALLY far away when you have to walk.

Tech-up luddites. I have seen life in 2011 without a car and a mobile phone. It ain’t pretty. It ain’t even life. Pathetic it might be, but progress doesn’t wait for you and the longer you stay away, the worse it seems. If you haven’t done anything about it by now, it may actually be too late. I have a revolver you can borrow and I know where there are some woods.

So how was your April?

Tesco

Without yesterday afternoon, this would be a week I could happily forget forever. Don’t get me wrong, it was nothing life threatening or too tragic, just a week I would quite happily leave behind.

If my current job has taught me anything is that people generally aren’t as bad as you think. Yes, a huge sweeping generalisation but one I have found to be true. I spent the first 20 years of my working life in small jobs, rarely meeting anyone new from one month to the next. After a while, I got the measure of most people and they were a mostly decent bunch. Of course, the fact that I never really came across anyone my own age or even only a few years older than me may have had something to do with it. One the few occasions I encountered those younger than me, I didn’t deal with it very well. Like most of us, basing my opinion on the way they looked or spoke.

Then I was made redundant. Now I work for the single largest employer of people between the ages of 18 and 30 (probably) in Plymouth. I have spent the last 5 years re-evaluating the way I see and interact with people. Every now and again you come across completely irredeemable cretins but generally first impressions are wrong. Once you get to know most people, you find that you are more alike than you think. They like and dislike most of the same things as you and more often than not are quite capable of holding a decent conversation with you…

…and then there are the sort of people who drive shiny red Vauxhalls in Tesco car parks on a Saturday afternoon. Shiny, red, customised and suspension set so low that their huge exhaust barely clears the road. So there I am, trundling a full trolley uneasily towards my car when I hear the following…

“you know this is a f**king road don’t you?”

Ginger skinheaded bloke shouting at me past his embarrassed, hoopy-earringed girlfriend. He drives on slowly.
“actually mate, I thought it was a car park”

He stops again and reverses about 2 feert..”what?”

“look, I didn’t mean to get in your way but this is the only way to get to my car.”

“you should get on the f**king pavement”….his girlfriend is staring straight ahead. “just drive Gary.”

If this idiot had looked around he would have noticed that there are in fact no pavements and only a VTOL equpped trolley would have been able to get from the store entrance to my car without inconveniencing at least one person. I could have pointed this out but I didn’t really want Sophie to see her Uncle Neil beaten to a pulp and decided to opt for the dignity of silence.

Now, I can see how he was annoyed. I have been there myself and his car is far more shiny and far more valuable than mine. A scratch from a shopping trolley would not be good. I have not, however, leaned out of my window and used the word “f**king” when addressing a complete stranger. I certainly have never shouted it.

The prick should get a blog if he has that much anger to spare.

Fraud

There was something very wrong in the world this week. Some bastard fraudulently took a few hundred quid from my bank account. They didn’t steal my card, they just go hold of my details and bought some mobile phone top-up vouchers over the phone. Luckily, my less than stellar credit rating forced the bank to stop honouring transactions beyond a certain point. The card has been cancelled and I have submitted my claim to get it back.

It could have been much worse I suppose. Only a fool would try and steal money from my bank account a few days before pay day. They could have got a few grand had they waited a week or so and then I really would have been up shit creek.

Now I find that its happened to practically everyone I know and almost always used for mobile phone top ups. From beavering around the net, I understand their dastardly scheme works something like this..

You steal a mobile phone and stick a pay-as-you-go sim card in it.

You top-up the sim with anything between £30 and £100 worth of credit using some stolen credit card details.
You sell it to some loser in a pub, letting them dial 150 and see that the phone has loads of credit. They give you £25 to £30 for the phone thinking they have got something of a bargain.

This has to be done really quickly, e.g. before the owner of the credit card used to buy the top up vouchers reports the transaction and the top-up is cancelled.

Unfortunately, it took me 3 days to notice.

Either way, the buyer of the phone never sees the guy who sold it to him again.

What scares me is the relatively few online places I have used my card with. Not a cowboy in site. You know them all. Big names.

Sophie

I just took Sophie home. She spent the night and as always made me forget everything else going on for nearly all the time she was here.

The Child Inside

He came out again. I just spent over £50 buying Star Trek comics on EBay. Now I know you probably think I am an idiot but you are wrong. They were really good comics. Two really really really rare ones, the successful purchase of which I am hoping is an upturn in my luck. So how much? Well. Two in a batch of 25 that are worth £50 or so quid each. I got all 25 for £3.50.

Were it not for my lack of credit card and meagre PayPal balance, I would have also bought a batch of 117 Star Trek novels for £30. You see, I sold all mine at a car boot sale about 10 years ago for about £30.

Only After Dark

I don’t often prattle on at 22:51pm but a smiley, shiny day ended with an pair of idiots about half and hour ago.

When did it happen? What rock did these idiots crawl out of?

When did cretinous cyclists start riding their bikes at night with no lights?

On the way home from work tonight not once, but twice did a suicidal lunatic narrowly avoid being mashed into the tarmac by my work-weary self. They pedal along, almost invisible, either oblivious or unafraid of 1 tonne of metal with 4 wheels. The second guy even stopped and found the time to mouth indignant obsenities at me as I safely crawled past him at 22mph, my heart in my mouth following his sudden appearance in my headlights.

Finished It

Much joy today at work as I managed to complete this month’s breaktime challenge. I finished the little Mechano aeroplane that I got for Xmas last year. It looks really good and will be my daily phone photo for 10th May. I did a really good job and had loads of spare bits left after.

A Bit Later

Having just read through the previous post, I feel a little bit daft. I always thought that blogging should be an immediate thing – slap down what comes out first and leave it there. Ok. So I will leave it there.

I just think I came across as some sort of suicidal, teenage goth. Before you think this sounds stupid, please bear in mind that I know quite a few suicidal, teenage goths so I know what I am talking about.

To tell the truth, I had more or less cheered up 10 minutes after sticking my X-Men 3 DVD into the player just after shutting down the PC. It still felt good though.

Fish & Pips

I am so proud of that title. It almost works.

First the fish. The bloody fish. There are three fish in my bowl/aquarium thing and for about the first week they were fine. Over the last few days, one in particular began to beat the crap out of the others. Now many of you are thinking..”they are goldfish with spongy soft orange mouths, how can they beat they crap out of other fish?”. To tell the truth I am still not sure myself but there was a lot of colliding, bashing and general orange spongy violence.

It seemed like the only thing to do was to fish the violent bugger out and segregate him/her. After almost an hour or useless thrashing about with ladle and a red beaker, I admitted defeat and borrowed a small net from a neighbour. A knock on the door at 10pm is strange at the best of times but when its a bare-footed neighbour asking to borrow fishing equipment it touches on the surreal. Within mere minutes (almost 20 of them), the shiny, golden thug was angrily alone in his tiny new home and all was calm again.

Imagine my confusion this morning when the large bowl appeared to completely devoid of fish. I looked everywhere and to be honest, there aren’t a lot of places to hide in there. Bizarrely, the were both hiding behind the filter. Probably forever traumatized by the sight of hairy hands, ladels and red beakers.

Now the Pips. Thanks for a fun little trip Pip and Vivian.

Saw Spiderman 3 last night. Don’t believe the reviews. It’s freekin’ awesome.

L8r

Cash Machines

What is it with people in front of you at the queue for a cash point machine? What the hell are they doing that takes so damn long? Is it just me? Am I so completely unlucky that these people just happen to make up the queue in front of me? Is it a global consipiracy and they are just hiding round the corner on the occasion that I have to get some cash, buy some bread, drop off my prescription note and get to work all in about 20 minutes flat because I had to see the end of Car Booty before leaving?

I am used to the whole password thing. Many years ‘supporting” a moderate sized PC network has dulled the edge of the anger that use to fill me up from socks. Many a PC user jots down their password on a post-it note and fixes it to the bottom of their monitor. Yes, this password is usually their date of birth or the name of a loved one. Yes, this is stupid but it happens and we all need to live in the world that is rather than the one we wish existed.

I forgotten what I was talking about now..

Oh yes.

Pins. Note I didn’t say Pin Number, something even the banks do now in their letters.

P=Personal

I=Identification

N=Number

Pin Number would be Personal Identification Number Number. Grrrrrrrrrr

Anyway. Back to the story.

Pins. 4 flippin numbers. FOUR. How freekin’ hard is it to remember 4 numbers? About as hard as letting off. Someone this morning had to get a little bit of paper out of their wallet and hold it up to the light to read it clearly. Just when you though this idiot couldn’t dive even deeper into the cretin pool he read it aloud. I was 4th in the queue and I heard it.

Why do people who wear glasses never actually have them to hand? He quite clearly couldn’t read the bloody display. It wasn’t sunny. It wasn’t a dull, long ago faded green screen job, it was a new colour display.

His terrified fingers squashed out his PIN one slow number after another. Each time he placed his turgid, annoying features mere cm’s from the screen to check his progress. I swear to god, I could have done a lap of the building in between each number and still done it faster.

Obviously the machine was eventually satisfied with his credentials, if not his technical ability because we at last reached stage two of his Mission Impossible. More blessed choices. Once more the nose was pressed close to the screen and my fellow queue members drifted one step close to Deep Vein Thrombosis.

The fear and confusion in his face was palpable and he was in serious need of a hug from the person behind. I can only conclude that he was worried that the pressing of an incorrect button would result in a catastrophe of global proportions. It had been at least a minute now and no button had been impressed. We were all convinced that any second now, the machine would think he had either died, gone home or been beaten senseless by one of us and the screensaver would kick in.

We shouldn’t have given up on him.

Beep.

Man. It was like VE day all over again. We cheered, cried and danced with a nearby sailor. We didn’t care who saw.

As long as I live I will retell of the day that the old man in front of me decided he wanted to check his balance.

But on screen or on paper?

Beep.

He was on a roll.

The slowest printer in the world eventually spat out a little piece of paper. Unnoticed at first. A kind word from the person behind him and it was in his hand. It was like a parable from the bible. Blessed be the person behind him. Show him the paper and he will go forth and take out some cash sayeth the lord.

Beep. Beep. Beep…….Beep….Beep. Whirrr…Whirrr…

Music to our ears. It had only been 6 minutes.

My hat had not had time to return to earth again before we hit a stumbling point.

The money had not come out and he had not realised the machine was waiting for him to retrieve his card from the slot. Once again the person behind came to our rescue and pointed it out to him. He retrieved it and spent at least 2 minutes slotting it back into his wallett. All the while the machine was beeping. The beep got progressively louder. I knew what that meant. I am pretty sure the guy in front of me knew what that meant but I don’t think Mr Cretin at the front or the kindly person behind knew.

Clunk.

The draw that opened with his cash promptly shut. To die, wet myself or beat him death with my wholegrain crusty bloomer. What to do?

Well, I am writing this, I am still wearing the same pants and I had a sandwich for lunch so obviously good sense prevailed.

So what happened in the end?

Well, he saw the cash being taken back into the machine. He swore, looked around and for the first time noticed the queue behind him.

“It’s broken. The bloody thing is broken.”

“Try in the shop mate” said one young builder type bloke who I now love. Off he went and the queue shot forward. Within in mere minutes the whole queue had satiated their desire for funds.

What happened after I will never know. I know the shop have no interest, desire or access to or of the cash machine so they probably shrugged their shoulders in that British lack of customer service way they have and sent him off to his bank to complain.

Why do old people who don’t work always go to the post office or the bank or the cash machine between 12 and 1?

Why do I always have to watch the end of Car Booty?

Is anyone listening?

Lucky Me

It’s been a strange old week. I have been bombarded with so much good news in the last 7 days that I am now scared to leave the house in case it all comes to a crashing end.

First of all. Bank charges. We all hate them. Some us are sufficiently bad at manageing their finances that they are a regular feature of our lives. A few weeks ago, things came to a head and I sent a crappy, angry Email to my bank protesting about the ridiculous nature of it all. Charging someone £30 for going £2.70 overdrawn. Whether its because the regulators are in the process of sorting all out or maybe because it was just my lucky week, I don’t know, but on Friday I got a huge wadge of cash paid back into my account under the heading “refund of fees”.

On Saturday, flushed with my success and financial status, I bought a scratchcard and won £9.

Home in time to watch The National. Unfornately, my luck had ended and Liberthine didn’t bring me yet more untold wealth. Not so for my mother who had £5 on the winner….

Garden Part 2

I had hoped to bring you exciting news and photographs showing me spraying my fence with my new sprayer. But it rained. So I can’t.

Look out for that sometime soon why don’t you..

Flickr

Although I still champion Flickr and all its wonderness, I am getting a little sick of comments by wankers. Sorry to be blunt but it seems that some people seem to spend all day prowling round Flickr looking for photos of places they recognise and then sending comments and messages along the lines of (adopt nerdy anorak voice) “I assume you are aware that the woods in your photo are in fact NOT Badgers Wood…” or “I was always under the impression that the railway bridge travels into North Devon and not over the Tamer as you indicate in you hurried caption”. Wankers.

Among the groups I belong to on Flickr, there is one called Dover. Now to myself and all of you reading this, this means Dover in Kent in ENGLAND. This crazy idea is re-inforced by a picture of THE WHITE CLIFFS OF FREEKIN’ DOVER next to the group title. Despite this, some yankocentric idiot keeps posting pictures of Dover somewhere in the States. This also happens with the Plymouth group I belong to. Endless photos of bloody antique american cars. Wankers.

Too damn hot. I hate it and hate every single person who bangs about going on about how “lovely” it is. It’s too damn hot. I crawl from one room to another, trying to stay in range of the fans. I can’t sleep. It’s miserable. You finally get off and wake up in the lovely cool of the early morning only to realise you have to get up and go to work. It’s hot at work too and all there is to drink is Coke and very, very, very cold water which hurts your throat.

I want it to rain and be cold.

Missed Wimbledon completely, just like always. Tennis never interested me, even after playing it for two terms at school.

Bad Lads is back. This time, the pride of our nation are doing a compressed Parachute training course. I love this program, not because they interest me or I care about what happens to them but because they prove that I am not imagining the depths to which youth of this type has stooped. I also enjoy seeing men of character interacting with them.

I am still amazed that they still volunteer for this thing without apparantly watching any of the previous programs. They idiot who left after 1 day was incredible. Nothing that happened to him could have surprised him if he had watched any of the previous 3 series but still he couldn’t hack it.

They stand face to face with serious army types demanding to know why they are shouting. The “you can’t tell me what to do” attitude” never far from the surface. Yes, you cretin. No-one can tell you what to do. Ever. No-one can ever tell you what to do.

Apart from Messers Turnbull and Mansfield, very few of you will sympathise with today’s scribbly ramble. This is part of the reason I chose the subject. For over 15 years, I was employed in a few jobs that required me on a regular basis to assist others with their Computer and IT problems.

In 1987 this was a far different beast than it was in 2001 when I formerly stopped taking the IT shilling. In 1987, PC’s were a stange oddity in the corner and mainframes (actually called minis for some reason) sat in large offices sucking life from the national grid with alarming ferocity and using diskettes the size of an opened Financial Times. In the early days of my IT employment, we just got on with it. As long as we provided reams and reams of green and white reports for middle management, we were generally left alone. We were kept busy printing and they were kept busy reading – a symbiotic relationship if ever there was one. Our abilities and opinions were rarely challenged and even I enjoyed fairly high regard amongst my colleagues as I wandered the building with a wheelbarrow full of reports dressed like Don Johnson from Miami Vice (rolled up suit sleeves never go out of style).

At home around this time, most of the nerdly persons owned Commodore Amiga’s, Atart ST’s and ageing Sinclair Spectrums. Home computers were so far removed from workplace computers that the two never came into conflict. You couldn’t even nick any useful consumables from work – apart from the odd mousemat or diskette of course. Music on a computer? The internet? Movies on a computer? Not a chance. ‘Twas the age of the blocky pixel, the chunky graphics and the whiny chip music.

Around 1993, it all changed. The original home computers withered and died. Nearly everyone who bought a new computer bought a PC and my life changed. I too bought one and suddenly my desk at home looked like my desk at work. I had the same software and the internet wormed it’s way into my life. All of a sudden, TV adverts (mostly AOL to be fair) promised a world of technological entertainment where 100′s of “channels” (actually just web pages) would inform, entertain and educate you and your family well into the 21st century. This was bollocks of course, but the rot had set in. By the mid 90s, the whole world and his dog had a PC. To be honest, most owners knew little more about the PC and its operations than their dog did. It was nobody’s fault and I don’t want to user-bash but in a marketing victory unseen since the Rubik’s cube or the Hula Hoop, John Q Suburbia now wanted – no needed – a PC more than anything else on the planet. How else was he to educate his children, balance his bank account and delve into a world of virtual 3d entertainment?

Actually, I am still waiting for that last one myself.

So, where am I heading with all this?

Well, along with this new PC came an almost unbelievable transformation in the everyday home computer user. Overnight, those who previously popped out for a pint at lunchtime or read the paper, suddenly started to try and install Flight Sim 2 on the company mainframe (sorry..mini) and would wax lyrical about every IT related subject under the sun. At first this was just a little amusing. Then it got a little annoying. Then I was pissed off an a regular basis. This continues to this day and I am sad to say that in 2006 it’s even worse.

I work with people who regularly ask me things or tell me things that make me want to laugh like a bathing hippo. It is so, so hard not to laugh out loud. This is not arrogance, indeed I am not sure what it is. It’s hard not to slap them and it’s even harder to explain.

I take the car to the garage. It fails it’s MOT. They fix it. I pay money and I cry for a few hours. It happens once a year. I never lift the bonnett other than to put a bit of oil in or to fill up my windscreen washer reservoir. I NEVER try and tell the mechanic what to do or try and do it myself. If they give me a piece of advice, I usually follow it. I am clever enough to know that they probably know what they are talking about. OK, so garage mechanics are probably not the best example. Subsitute Doctor, Dentist or whatever if that helps.

Why oh why does everybody not do the same with computers? Day after day after day I am assaulted with at least one request or opinion that even after all this time I am at a loss to deal with. I am not talking about Helpdesk stuff. When I looked after 35 users on a network and helped them with Windows, Word, Excel and Access, I mostly had a great time. 9 times out of 10 they were very grateful with my help and I got a great deal of satisfaction. What I AM talking about are the endless questions, opinions and statements that spew forth during my working day.

Particular favourites in recent years.

1. “I am thinking of buying a PC to help my kids with their schoolwork.” This is decreasing in popularity as less homes these days are without a PC. It’s a strange statement as most of the people asking don’t really seem to know what they mean. If you ask for a few more details, they have seldom thought it through. If they just say something like “well, he/she uses Microsoft Office at work” or “his teacher says it will be a good idea because he/she is interested in them” then that’s fine. What usually happens is they get ratty with me and arrogantly stomp out the room. This same sort of person buys the cheapest PC they can find (usually Packard Bell from PC World) and immediately sets up Broadband Internet Access in their child’s bedroom. I used to warn about the dangers of internet porn but I stopped. They just assumed I was some sort of pervert for knowing about it in the first place. I long ago decided to let The Daily Mail rant about this vile topic in the hope that Britain will be cleansed over the next decade or so.

2. The person who buys a PC and then hardly uses it because the internet is broken. This is alarmingly common these days. “I switched it on and the internet broke. Telewest came out to fix it and told me that the internet is not broken but I know it is – my friend says.”

3. The banner ad-clicker or the free software downloader. Oh dear. Porn from nowhere. I now run. I run like the wind. I have NO chance of coming out of this one unscathed. It starts off many different ways but usually something like “I have an icon on the desktop I can’t get rid of”. You have to feel for them. They have had to make a difficult decision – talk to work colleague about embarrassing porn thing or have your family taken away by social services because your a vile perv. This person has no anti-virus software and no firewall and deserves to burn in hell for that alone as far as I am concerned. It is at this point that I run. I put one hand on my hat and run far and fast. Nothing you say from this point on will be acceptable to your colleague in any shape or form. You see, there is no way that they or any of their family has been anywhere near any porn site – ever. EVER!! No. You are wrong. It came in the window on its own or the milkman did it or something. How dare you suggest such a thing. The fact that, as I found out many years ago, their internet cache and history details a pornographic appetite worthy of one of the more perverse Roman Emperors, is just not relevant. Get a firewall, some anti-virus software and download some anti-spyware software you cretin. The best of them are all free. Get it or don’t, just don’t talk to me again EVER.

You see, dear friends, I know a thing or six about computers. That’s why you ask me in the first place. If you don’t like what I say, bugger off and ring a helpline. Better still, throw the PC in a skip, buy a Playstation 3 and keep your bank statements in a shoe box under the bed. With the money you save by not needing Broadband, buy your kid some encyclopedias (ok very cheap encyclopedias).

If you must have one – they do look quite cool after all and now only cost about £200 – remember this. Buying a paintbrush doesn’t make you an artist and buying a typewriter doesn’t make you an author. I don’t say this to be cruel or arrogant but I have been asked questions about buying PCs over and over again and I have seen how some of it works out. But of course, you all know that. You already have a PC and you read my blog. Achieving such a task probably puts you in the top 10% of PC user ability.

The legalised noise pollution and pet terror that is Guy Fawkes night is upon us again. Actually it was on us last night. Actually it has been upon us since the “authorities” saw fit to allow the shops to sell fireworks to anyone with a glassy gaze and floor-dragging knuckles at the end of British Summer Time several weeks ago.

I have harped on about this before on the forum and I will continue to play my large instrument every year until we take notice of most countries in Europe and ban the sale of fireworks to the public. Sadly, last night’s accident proved that not even council organised displays are 100% safe, but the time when we allow anyone with a few pallets, a tesco shopping trolley and a stupid idea to set a mighty blaze on half an acre of grassy knoll is surely past. Anyone with a rose-tinged perspective who remembers waving a sparkler in front of their rosy-cheeked face whilst dad went to get you a toffee apple, should visit my manor anytime between October the 20th and well….January 5th. Every year a huge mountain of bad sense is piled up on a little green near me. Every year the authorities drag it down and every year it goes back up again. The fire lights up the sky until one or more fire engines (or “appliances” as Frankie Howard called them) turns up and wastes some more public funded time amid the abusive cries of local urchins.

As I sit here a 10:07pm on November 6th, the fireworks are still going off and Sam my elder cat is hiding under my bed. His heart almost beating out of his chest. Its pissing down with rain but the noise started before 5pm and will go onto at least 3am if last night is anything to go by. Last night a neighbour (in my nice quiet estate) was lucky not to lose his car when some baseball-capped loser threw a firework at it whilst riding pillion on a (probably stolen) moped.

Don’t even get me started on “Penny For The Badly-Stuffed Bin Bag”.

I am no spoilsport.

Well…

Actually I am.

Stop this now. I wouldn’t trust most of the people I have seen buying Fireworks to sit the right way round on a toilet.

Neil Argue. Reporting for “My Two Cents”. Plymouth, Devon.