Gloomy Garden

Its been such a strange week. Sunday was very, very odd. I woke up late and in a bad mood. I actually got up even later and went straight outside to cut the grass before if rained again. Five weeks of growth was already ankle-height and I knew this was going to be a 3 or 4 box grass load.

And the mood got worse.

All day, a huge cloud of doom hung around me and refused to shift. There was nothing in particular to blame it on, but it persisted. I was short tempered and miserable all day. Is this what depression is like? I have often wondered and I do not make this statement in an attempt to amuse. I know several of my friends on here have suffered from depression during there lives and I don’t mean to detract from the seriousness of this.

I went to bed early and woke up fine. Really fine. All trace of the previous day’s mood gone.

Go figure.

The View From The DYRMS Webcam 2004

I finally got around to looking at the DYRMS pupil’s website(not to be confused with the official school “bannerware” sites) and before I knew it, 2 hours had passed. It’s a funny old site with a slightly muddled but easily navigable design. Most interesting of all is the new webcam site which is not only the fastest I have seen (1 frame a second or so) but is surprisingly clear. It points at the small parade square and seems to be attached to the side of the CCF block. The dining hall is on the left and the main school block on the right. Call me a nostalgically obsessed weirdo with nothing better to do with his life if you want, but it will be strange to watch the dukies wander about come September.

Also on the site are house reports. These make interesting reading and just go to show how much school life has changed in the last 20 years. £3 pocket money for 3rd formers? 19 day autumn half-term? Whatever next?

The week was rounded off by Emails from Stan, Sean, Ian K and Hx all within 20 mins of eachother. Simple pleasures matter the most.

Later Dudes.

Red

Many of you have been holding your breath waiting for my detailed report following Operation Fence Spray. After one week’s delay the news is not good.

What a complete waste of bloody time.

Picture if you will the television advert with the laughing fat bloke. There he is spraying his fence quickly and with consumate ease whilst his nerd-like neighbour flounders about with the traditional “brush”. Well, I may have started off as laughing fat bloke but I ended the job rather happily with my trusty brush.

Points to ponder, re: The Sprayer.

• I stupidly bought one that runs on batteries. Shouldn’t be a problem I thought, after all its only a little pump and they are 4 big batteries. Wrong. Batteries lasted almost 2 fence panels (I have 18).
• You are advised by the enclosed pamphlett that you hold the nozzle (ooerr) about 25cm from the fence and move it from left to right in a continuous smooth motion. If you do this, the slightest whisper of wind blows the fine red mist up in the air, left, right or even worse back in your own bloody face. The 2 fence panels I managed to took almost 2 days to dry and are now covered in an uneven, gloopy mess.
• It goes bloody everywhere. The grass around the bottom of the fence has a nice red moustache, as has the top of my neighbours hedges and the back of his shed. Luckily, he can’t see the back of his shed unless he stands in my garden.

So I gave up and used a brush. Yes it took 4 hours and my back hurt like hell after, as did my arm the next day but it looks so much better.

The Sleeping Car

Part of the reason for my lack of blogging in the last week of so is a serious case of insomiability. Oh come on. You never saw that coming did you? A new and original excuse if ever there was one.

Let me explain.

The car is not well. It all started about 6 months ago. Over-revving when pulling away from traffic lights, lack of power going up hills forcing me into 2nd and, last Saturday, 1st gear in front of huge queue of rapidly-angering drivers.

I also did a bit of a freelance jobby last week and I could not solve one of their problems. This bothered the hell out of me and for some reason combined with the car nonsense to prevent me from having a decent kip for a few days.

I am not overly stressed about it but when you find yourself lying in bed wide awake at 8am on a Sunday morning listening to a church service on Radio 4, its quite unsettling.

It all seems ok again now though.

Work is fine. I am managing a team this week and there is not too much stress. I had to break some bad news to somebody which always lightens the day. Once again, I had a desperate need to keep talking and fill the gaping hole in the conversation whilst the news sank in. I really need to sort that out.

Excitement

Spiderman 3, Fantastic Four 2 and Die Hard 4 all coming soon. How excited am I? Like a 12 year old child. I have been to Quicktime and looked at the trailers for all 3. Bruce’s 4th outing looks particularly proposturous and over the top.

These Made Me Laugh

There is great truth in the statement by someone whose name I can’t remember that it would be a really good idea to write down every joke you ever hear the minute you hear it. I would have a huge and very valuable tome already after my 38 summers but as we all know, theory is one thing and practice is another.

It is also true that although TV and Radio comedy is probably as good as its ever been, I still laugh the most at things I hear at work or read on the forum. I have lost count the number of times I have laughed almost to the point of collapse at work and said to myself “I must put that on the blog”. Sadly, after a few hours more work and a drive home, it either seems not quite so funny or I forget.

So here I am trying to write this wrong. Here is a concise list of things that made me laugh over the last week.

• The news story that an airline pilot is currently suspended after an April Fool’s gag he played on the passengers of his 737. Shortly after take off he switched on the cabin radio and addressed the happy band of bleachy white folk headed for Malaga..”Hello, this is you luggage handler. I don’t know what I pressed but we appear to have taken off…”
• The mighty, underated and too quickly dismissed Danny Baker. The man is a genius. I first started listening to him in 1994 when he took over the DLT slot on Radio One. Since then he has been all over the place, GLR and BBC London. In the last few years I have been reduced to listening to him on the BBC Website. This is not exactly perfect, so imagine my surprise when his new podcast popped up on Itunes. If you have the capability, download it and listen. He seems to think that podcasting is where he is going to be now as he seems a little jaded with radio.Also, listening to comedy at work on your Ipod is dangerous at the best of times but this is deadly. Don’t miss the “man with a lisp sings the Pink Panther cartoon theme” or the regular “shoot me I am a session musician”. Anyway, enough eulogising. Just listen to it.
• In the category of “only makes Neil Laugh probably”, we are getting new “daylight” lighting at work. Great news for us. Bad news for the Night Shift who will probably be sent to sleep. Think about it. I know I did.
• Punchline of the week…”I thought I was putting my arm in a butcher’s dustbin.”

Ta Ta

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.

I know what will cheer up a dull Sunday. I will clean out the car. I suspect I am not alone in not really caring that much about the state of the inside of my car. My glove compartment contains things older than my cats and are probably left well alone, but the tutting and comments of my mother during one particular trip to the garden centre (more later) drove me to drastic action. So, with bucket of warm soapy water, duster and polish, glass cleaner and small hoover on the end of a long extension lead, I strode off into the early morning sun towards the yodamobile.

The extension lead was long enough. Almost. I actually had to turn the car around to make it reach, something which made all the net-curtain nazis think I was some sort of idiot. After almost an hour, the car shone inside and out and I honestly didn’t feel any better. I used to do the same in my 6th form study and rarely achieved anything except killing an hour or so. Rarely did a weekend go by when my locker and desk weren’t shoved around only to be put back again when I realised they only really fit one way. But that’s not really the same is it? Looks like I shoehorned another school reference in again…mmm.

One last thing. Good advice. Don’t discard the red wax from Babyell cheese in your glove compartment. It melts and waits months to disgust you by surprise.

Green Fingers

Garden Centre visits with those near and dear to you are a trying time. If it wasn’t for the Cappacino and Cheesecake, I doubt I would bother at all.

Miscellaneous Garden Observations for 24th July 2005

1. Old lady asking how much the fans are. “I am sorry madam, they are not for sale, they are for keeping the place cool”. “Do you sell fans at all?”. “No madam.”. “You should, its quite hot in here”.

2. Posters with mottos and proverbs on. I had forgotten how much I dislike these. Small wooden sign -”I Fought The Lawn And The Lawn Won”. Humour for those without any of their own. Wit is spontaneous and should go as quickly as it comes. Can you imagine someone standing on your lawn shouting the same joke over and over again? Thought not.

3. Just why are big trees more expensive than small ones? They are older and will not last as long.

4. Can of coke 95p. Wotz that all about?

5. I can’t help myself from buying nice biscuits in garden centres. I just noticed the packet and they are made in Stoke. Tradional Cornish Toffee Crunch. Made in Stoke.

Fill

I don’t know what to make of whats going on in London at the mo. The forum is full of chat (what its for..) and I am fascinated by it all. One thing that does bother me though is 24 hour news. I would love to credit this complaint to the person I first heard it from on the radio but I can’t honestly remember who it is. When you bear in mind that I listen to Radio 4 a lot, this is quite excusable.

Anyhoo. 24 hours news. Yes.

The problem with 24 hour news services is that they are always on. On Thursday this week, there was little actual news for 3 or 4 hours and in its place we were subject to speculation, rumour and little else. Everyone anywhere near what happened was questioned as we were treated to distant views of police barriers and fire engines.

I don’t have an answer to this by the way. This is just an observation.

Wink.

Little & Large

So Stan likes DVD box sets too.

Neil & Stan’s “Things In Common List”.

1. We both like DVD box sets.
2. Neither of us sang in West Side Story.
3. We are often found in Dover come November time.

Up at the crack of dawn on Saturday and off to a splendid cafe on Dartmoor for the best breakfast fryup in the western hemisphere, with Sophie and mum. Still too damn hot, despite the early hour but I did manage to educate the 9 year old sproglet in the joys of Fried Bread and Marmalade(tm). In return she showed me the latest fad, known as Scoobies, which involve knotting plastic laces of different colours until you make nice patterns. Very cool. Nice to see its not all Playstations, drugs and handguns with the youngsters these days.

As a treat, she gets to watch TV until she falls asleep but unfortunately Uncle Neil beat her to it and started snoring half way through a Tarzan cartoon around 10pm. Apparantly I dozed off and slid on to the floor quite slowly and would have probably stayed there had she not started to laugh like a hyena. Needless to say I managed to crawl back to my room, dignity barely intact.

Then, as promised, I slept most of Sunday. I bore down on the lawn late afternoon. For once, I fought the lawn and I won….

Monday. Nothing special to report. I was being far too lucky with my broken car window – sunny every day since it broke. The rain came down today and I was forced to tape a carrier bag over it. Very cool. Still, they fix it tomorrow – out of pocket but dignity restored.

Night Night

OK…so it wasn’t purple, but it rained and rained and rained…in fact it still is. In between showers I managed to become B&Q’s best customer by buying more decorative bark than anyone this side of The Chelsea Flower Show. It really is good stuff. You chuck it down on top of any annoying flower beds and you never have to weed them ever again. I wish I’d known about it years ago. We had new photo ID badges issued at work this week, something that involved posing for a very uncomfortable head shot in the personel department (ok…HR dept, something I refuse to call it). It is safe to say that I am far more comfortable with looking at photos of me since I started the website. Yes folks, despite what many say, there are plenty of photos of me on it. Anyhow, I could show you the photo but apparantely that would be a breach of security. Suffice to say, I look adorable.

A week of bad news. Both DYRMS and both not warranting detailed mentions for now. One of the  events generated a mix of emotions I have only shared with my closest of chums so far, and thats how things will stay for now. I find it strange that I can still surprise myself.

But I digress….

It is so damn hot. I  dragged the mower over what passes for a lawn earlier today and lost about 8 pints of fluid in the process. I then came inside and drank several pints of water and got a headache. I then took two Ibruprofen and then peed…and so on. The circle of life.

In a related matter, I recommend the book “Fast Food Nation” to anyone who can get hold of it. The name of the author escapes me for the moment, but the their description of how the ingredients in the products of some of the Fast Food companies are manipulated to put most customers on the “salt-sugar-drink-pee” cycle will ring true with many of you. Have you ever eaten a burgar without a drink? Me either. Try asking for fries without salt next time, it really annoys them – as does asking for drinks without ice.

So a cracker of a weekend comes to a close. How cool is life when the most fun I had was carrying 6 bags of gravel round the back of the house? On the plus side, the flower bed/rockery now looks great and promises to be maintenance-free. I was surprised it looked so good considering the messy earlier stages in it’s construction. I am not gifted in the horticultural area but I mostly get there in the end, even if I do have to walk away, take a break and come back later.

It looks like it will be hot again tonight.  The fan has been on 3 hours and will probably be on all night. Its funny, but it reminds me of those hot nights in Dover, when my Lower 6th study was the small cupboard to the right of the 3rd form dorm. Room for a bed and a desk and a chair and my good humour. Still it was home for a while and certainly beat sharing a dorm with everyone else.

On a final note, I had a nice Email from a guy called Eric Goddard in Australia today. It started with those always welcome words that compliment my website the memories it brings back. He was a Dukie of the 60s and has only been back during the 1986 summer holidays. I extended my usual invitation to a swift 10 or so at The Britannia Pub, but we will have to wait and see.

Ta Ta