Wednesday evening I drove a rented van, picked up a couple of items of furniture from Sophie’s flat, delivered them to my house, picked up a couch, delivered it to her flat and came home…
Came home to enjoy the sight of my suite of furniture as God nature the manufacturers intended – and as originally bought, in the summer of last year.
It’s the little things in life.
I have decided to take a leaf out of Young Masher‘s book. I’m sorry about that. I’ll stick it back in with some sellotape.
But I’m also going to keep him company, in a virtual kind of way.
Every February, Young Masher has a stab at publishing one post a day. He was recently moaning wingeing complaining saying that he finds it a difficult target to achieve.
How difficult could this be?
Not very (he said to himself, full of naive innocence).
So, starting February 1st I’ll be lobbing one article/blog post a day, for the month, on to the internet.
Some of the posts will be more serious than others. And some posts will be about as serious as navel-lint.
So stay tuned!
It’s all downhill from here. And when I say ‘here’ I mean February 1st.
*nods*
I wore my Dress shoes to work today.
I’m preparing my feet for the Ball on Saturday. There may be some tripping the light fantastic. Or stumbling the heavy mediocre – that might be more accurate.
Or there may not be. But either way, I want my feet to be uncomplaining about my Dress shoes.
And how is it that my Dress shoes are a 10-1/2 whilst my work shoes are an 11?
But one thing is clear.
For today at least, I had the brightest, shiniest shoes at work.
Anyway.
You know I recently wrote about meeting the redoubtable Twitter friend in UCH last Thursday?
This isn’t Twitter related, but last weekend, whilst in Paris, I met an American girl, Amy-Lee.
I’m not going to write about what happened during the couple of hours we spent together. If you want the details you’ll have to listen to this week’s show (This Reality Podcast, No 199).
What I will say is that today I received a stunningly beautiful email from Amy-Lee. So stunningly beautiful it moved me close to tears.
As a result of a couple of hours in Paris with Amy-Lee, I have an open invitation to visit her in Philadelphia whenever I care, and to stay at her house, as an honoured guest, for an all-expenses paid holiday.
Aren’t people excellent?
Regular Twitter friends will know that, on Friday, I went in to London to watch the Young Vic’s ‘Hamlet’, featuring Michael Sheen in the title role.
A full and detailed review is in the works, and will be published soon.
However.
Imagine my surprise as, settling down, five minutes before the performance, the stranger seated next to me leaned over, offered me his hand and said ‘It’s Brennig, isn’t it?’
And the world visibly shrank around me, as that list of ‘Random People You Know But Are Never Going To Meet At A Performance Of Hamlet At The Young Vic’ had a line drawn through a name.
People not on Twitter won’t get this.
Because Twitter is a real-time/near-real-time communications medium, it is remarkably easy to establish relationships with Twitter ‘friends’.
I have been on Twitter since 31st March 2008. Since then 345 people have found and followed me and, because it is a social network, I have (usually) followed them all back.
Social, it definitely is. A network it is too.
I have gone on to physically meet *counts quickly* 40-ish Twitter friends and, without exception, they have all been lovely people.
Yesterday evening I drove in to London, because one of my Twitter friends had been taken ill, whilst at work, and had been admitted to UCL Hospital for tests.
I pitched up outside UCL at 6.15pm and waited in my car, listening to music and, erm, Tweeting, Texting and receiving updates on his progress, as he moved through the medical system.
I’ve had enough hospital admissions to know that medical staff are reluctant to discharge someone from their care, and have that person set out on a significant public transport journey home.
I thought that if he was allowed home, he’d need a lift. It was that simple.
About 9.30pm he was moved to a hospital ward and I was invited up for a chat. I accepted and yes, we physically met for the first time and we chatted about many things.
And he is, indeed, a very nice guy.
As the clock ticked on, the nurses started saying things like ‘And in the morning we’ll do more tests’, so it became clear he wasn’t going to be allowed home.
But we chatted on.
At 11pm a real-life/Twitter friend of his (who was also an unmet Twitter friend of mine) pitched up with overnight supplies for him.
The three of us chatted some more, briefly, before being thrown out by the nursing staff.
I gave the (previously unmet) Twitter friend a lift back to her home in Fulham, then headed back to Witney, getting home about half-past midnight.
I hope he – the Twitter friend in hospital – is good this morning. I hope he’s fit and hope his prognosis is excellent.
But this activity? This is the kind of thing we do for our friends, isn’t it?
Whether they’re unmet Twitter friends or not.
I’m going to a ‘do’ next week; it’s the Annual Event-Riders Association Ball.
Yesterday afternoon I started to dig around, to make sure that I could put my hands on everything that I needed to.
The ‘fairy-that-comes-along-and-steals-your-cufflinks-when-you-think-you-know-where-they-are’ has paid a visit.
So I’ve had to buy a new pair of cufflinks. I went for these funky little black-faced babies (not a great photo; I went for black-faced cuff-links, because the studs on the front of my dress-shirt are also black-faced):
Then I tried on my Dinner Suit because, you know, it’s important to check these things still fit.
It does.
And that’s it, really.
Shiny dress shoes? Check.
Dinner suit? Check.
Dress shirt? Check.
Bow-tie? Check.
Cuff-links? Check.
I guess I’m sorted.
[update: although this post was written and published on 11th January, there is an Op Ed in today's Times (14th Jan) that precisely echoes my legal argument. To paraphrase: Scotland leaving the Union affects everyone in the Union. Therefore everyone in the Union should have a vote on whether or not this event takes place]
Regular visitors will know that I hold our Prime Minister, the Right Honourable David Cameron, in the highest regard*.
But I can’t help wondering if he’s quite got his thinking in the right place, with regard to the proposal from the Scottish Nationalist Party (SNP), that a referendum be put be put forward, on whether Scotland should leave the United Kingdom.
Why do I think Mr Cameron might be muddled in his thinking?
Because our Prime Minister is only offering the people of Scotland a referendum.
The status of the United Kingdom is, simply, a legal entity.
It’s not a marriage, where one party can divorce another just because they’re fed up with their incessant snoring.
No.
The United Kingdom is more than that.
So really, given that the SNPs proposal is, essentially, the dissolution of the United Kingdom as we know it, shouldn’t the referendum – on whether or not Scotland should be allowed to leave the UK – shouldn’t that referendum be extended to all members of the UK?
Not just the Scots?
Because, after all, Scotland leaving the UK would not just affect the Scots, would it?
*not really
The studio laptop started throwing BSOD error messages a couple of days ago. So I began running a series of deep-scan diagnostics which, eventually, firmly pointed to a non-peripheral hardware failure.
The final utility did a l-o-n-g comb through the system config, and eventually popped its head up to say ‘It’s your Hard Disk, man.
The Hard Disk continued to work, but on boot-up I would get an error message that said (I’ll paraphrase) ‘backup and get off this thing now!’
Backing things up, whether the things are data, audio and/or video files, isn’t an issue, because all of my data sits on the NAS.
Obviously, my hardware is covered by maintenance contracts and, as a result, Mr Dell is booked to come and fit a new Hard Disk.
So it’s not the data that has me hacked off, because everything is protected.
And I mean ‘everything’ is protected. Everything. Right down to my bookmarks and favourites in various browsers.
But what’s not protected, and will have to be reinstalled, are all of the applications.
Some will be very easy to get installed, configured and up and running again.
Some just won’t.
And it’s the latter, the applications that have so many complex installation and authentication hoops to be jumped through, that are the real pain in this exercise.
Our wonderful*, fantastic**, fully representative of the people*** Government**** has committed to a thing known as the HS2.
The name makes many enquiring minds want to find out what happened to the HS1. If you have such a mind, I can save you the bother. It doesn’t exist. Never did.
So the HS2 is, straight out of the box, a marketing ploy. Because of that little numerical value – that teeny tiny ’2′ – it misleads lazy minds in to thinking that we’re getting an upgrade to the HS1. Or something. Well forget that. Because we’re not.
The HS2 is a High Speed rail-link that is planned to run – in the first phase of the implementation – between London and Birmingham.
The cost of HS2 is £33 billion, but I’d advise you to keep a steady eye on that number. Wiser heads know that it will soon start flickering upwards, quicker than the anti-collision lights on a Typhoon, as it performs a battle take-off, with full afterburners.
Phase 2A of the HS2 is to connect Birmingham with Manchester. In a High Speed kind of way. Phase 2B (ah, 2B or not 2B, that is, indeed, the question) is intended to connect Birmingham with Leeds. In a High Speed kind of way.
I’d advise you to keep an eye on that leg of the plan. My Spidey-senses tell me that when the out-of-control costs finally get too ludicrous for words, Phase 2B will vanish. And Phase 2A might get postponed for a dozen or so years.
There has been, and will, inevitably, continue to be an outcry from the scabby locals***** who are concerned that they might see:
no disruption
a little temporary disruption
quite a lot of semi-permanent disruption
themselves living in a marshalling yard
(delete as applicable)
But there is one thing about HS2, one area of improvement, that I would like people in the country’s decision-making echelons to consider, and I offer this to the debate as an interested bystander.
The leader of this country’s once great (now pathetic) Parliament, is David Cameron. David’s constituency is Witney, in Oxfordshire.
Many people in Witney commute to either London and/or Birmingham on a regular basis.
There is no train station (or even a train line) in the town of Witney.
None!
Instead, the poor downtrodden locals****** have to take the only Trunk road to either Cheltenham/Gloucester or Oxford, change forms of transport to a Park and Ride bus, trundle in to town, change forms of transport again and maybe – just maybe – they’ll be lucky enough to get a train going where they want it to go.
Add to this Charlie Chaplinesque transport ‘plan’ (seriously, someone somewhere actually deemed this farcical state of affairs was acceptable!), the simple fact that the East/West road that runs through the town of Witney, that connects Witney with Cheltenham/Gloucester in the west or Oxford in the east is, the A40.
The A40 is a poorly-maintained, mostly single-carriageway (all the way between Oxford and Witney in both directions). ‘Trunk’ road.
As result of the single-carriageway aspect, the A40 is, at 7am (which is not an unreasonable time of day to be travelling to work), solid.
The notional 26-minutes it should take to travel the 13 – yes, that’s *thirteen* – miles between Witney and Oxford suddenly balloons to over an hour!
Thirteen miles an hour? This is acceptable in the 21st Century? How?
Sadly, the same is true of the return journey.
Wouldn’t it be super if the MP for Witney (D. Cameron) recognised this continent-sized gap in the transport market (not to mention, in his own political constituency) and, you know, exerted some influence to have the lives of we plebs massively improved?
Of course, there is no hope of this happening.
The MP for Witney lives in, erm, London. Always has (from before he became Prime Minister), always will do.
So that’s all right then, isn’t it?
Erm.
No. It isn’t.
It perpetuates just how out of touch with his own constituency David Cameron is.
And I don’t buy the instant defence ‘Oh, he’s the Prime Minister, you know!’
Yes, I do fucking know.
And to reiterate; David Cameron has *never* lived in the constituency of Witney.
Never.
What a contemptible little worm he is.
Disregard the naysayers, the simpletons who get hung up on the ‘But where would you put the station?’ And, ‘where would you run the lines? You can’t run them there because there are new houses in the way!’ Or ‘But the old railway bridges have been taken out!’
This is a £30 billion (plus) project. Someone with a bit of vision could get together with some engineers and would, I’m sure, map a simple, slight hook to the left, to take in the town of Witney.
But it is, of course, a waste of time looking for clear-headed vision in the direction of the Witney MP.
Because we have David Cameron.
*no it’s not
**not in a month of Sundays
***If you aggregate the voter numbers, more people voted against this consortium of weird bed-fellows and hapless half-wits (or felt so disenfranchised from the system they just chose not to vote), than turned out and voted for this Government. This is not an indicator of a healthy democracy
****barely!
*****common folk who don’t vote in either House
******non helicopter-owning plebs
It’s OK, I’ll live. But I just thought I should tell you that I have manflu. Just in case you’re one of the few people I haven’t emailed, Twittered or SMSd to, you know, say how well I’m doing, under these difficult and adverse health conditions.
Oh, it’s alright. You don’t need to worry. I *know* I won’t get anything in the Queen’s Birthday Honours list. Not even a mention in next year’s New Year Honours.
But that’s alright, I’m not actually looking for a gong.
More like, looking for a chest to pin it on right now.
*sniff*
Sorry about that.
The body’s capacity to manufacture snot is something of a scientific marvel.
Not the manufacturing process per se, but the sheer volumes of the stuff? That’s amazing.
*koff koff*
But I’ll live.
Even though the condition I have has been scientifically* diagnosed as ‘Manflu H3 (miss, B7 bugger, you got me. Sorry, I stopped for a quick game of battleships with a friend in Sydney. Isn’t it amazing what you can use technology for? Anyway, where was I? Oh yes).
Even though this lethal strain of illness has been scientifically** diagnosed as Manfly, erm, no, Manflu (Manfly is a totally different disease. Don’t ask) Terminus. Yes that’s right. Manflu Terminus.
Even though that’s what I have.
Like Gloria Gaynor, I Will Survive.
If I was fit enough I’d get out of bed and do a little dance. But I’m not. So I won’t.
And I plan on being back at work tomorrow.
*nods, emphatically*
So that’s me.
*big snotty sniff*
How are you?
*not really
**still not really