An open letter

Now I'm not one for being pissed off in general, but tonight someone may or may not have annoyed me and I'm not sure who. The following writing is based on third or fourth hand knowledge passed to me earlier and could actually be based on complete nonsence so please ignore if appropriate. None of it may have happened.

Dear Whoever

Apparently you have felt that I have written something about someone within this blog that you feel I shouldn't have. And you felt it necessary to phone me at work to tell me so. Thank you for taking an interest in these writings, it's always nice to have readers with opinions. I do however feel it necessary to point out the following things:

1) Don't phone me at work about this rubbish. In all likelihood I'll just hang up on you.
2) If you have the ability to phone me at work, then you must know where I sit. Come and see me and we'll talk like adults.
3) I'm on holiday at the moment!!!
4) There are perfectly good ways to contact me advertised on the site. Use them!
5) Why are you reading this anyway? If you don't like what I write, turn off! I, for example don't like The Daily Mail. So I don't read it.
6) Did you miss the reader survey?

I hope that that is sufficient to aid you to continue your life in happy bliss. In the meantime, thanks again for reading, and I hope to hear your lovely thoughts soon.

Yours faithfully,

Lint xxx

On Dreams and poetry...

Dreams are funny things. Normal dreams are fine - upon waking up, you normally either a) forget about the whole thing, or b) think "mmmm, that was a nice dream, wish it was real" or possibly sometimes c) wake up screaming with cranberry jelly encasing your whole body. c) isn't actually too bad, as you do then get eat the yummy jelly. So those ones are ok.

The trickier ones are the ones you have sort of halfway between sleeping and waking. Or between waking and sleeping. The dozetime. Stuff dreamt of there is a bit more plausible. It's maybe cos the dreams stick more in proper memory than dream memory and so linger longer. And so you can wake with the complete uncertainty as to whether something happened or not. Which can be confusing.

But they are not as bad as the times when you have a dream within which you go to sleep and have a dream. How dull/depressed/mental must you be to have to have dreams in which you need to escape your dreams by dreaming. And it gets confusing when you wake up from one of them but you're not sure which.

And where does all the detail come from? I'm sure there have been times when I've dreamt of being in (say) a library, and I've been able to pull books off the shelf and read them like real books. In the morning the details go, so there's no way of knowing whether you made up some great book wordings, or just have a memory of the contents without ever actually having dreamt them. Same thing with songs too. If I could wake up and remember the stuff and write it down, I could have some better songs. I believe Coleridge actually (well allegedly) could do the dream poetry thing. "Kubla Khan" was apparently dreamt and ended unfinished because he was interrupted by a stranger knocking on his dooor. I think. Ok, test for me: How much of said poem can I still remember:

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan,
A stately pleasuredome decree.
With walls and ???? girdled round
and ???? measureless to man ???

Hmmm. Less than I was hoping for. I'm sure I used to have the whole thing committed to memory (for no good reason). Original version is here for anyone interested. Not making my recollection look too good... So the question you're all asking... Which poems can I still remember? Not many. "Jabberwocky" I think is stuck in there for ever. But otherwise just fragments and lines. And I can't blame my memory losses on being interupted by men from Porlock. I don't even know where that is.

Also never rule out the possibility that your mind is being messed with each night by the controllers.

Still sunny!

Went into town earlier to pick up a sandwich for lunch. Still sunny so I broke out the sunglasses and light jacket. Bought a nice sandwich and then sat in The Museum Gardens to eat it, read the paper, listen to some tunes and enjoy the unseasonal weather. Would have been better if there hadn't been a large group of schoolchildren sitting nearby scaring pigeons. I'm sure they could have occupied themselves more usefully by sitting quietly and colouring some pictures. But, no. Pigeon chasing was their pastime of choice.

Summer has arrived!

Today has been lovely and sunny. And so we spent the sunny evening in a bar in a cellar. Not outside where it was nice.

And why was it sunny? I have to put the 'blame' on Mr Daniel Wylie. His new (possibly first) album is out today, and he is someone whose songs can do nothing but evoke summer. His old band, The Cosmic Rough Riders, were brilliant summer sunny stuff. And he still is, and they have carried on without him and still are great. So it's like two for one at Budgens, but with summery bands.

Chick Lit

The Jane Austen quote I was aiming at in the pub earlier:
"It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife"

I was reasonably close... So how true is the statement in today's liddle world?

Doh!

Sometimes my capacity for doing and saying really stupid things surprises even me. And sometimes they are so dumb that they deserve to be shared with the world. Here are two from the wedding reception last night.

1. Two TV shows on the telly. Father Ted and Black Books. Father Ted stars Ardol O'Hanlon. Black Books stars Dylan Moran. For the past x years I have been utterly convinced that they were the same person. I hadn't quite registered that they had different names. I had noticed that they looked different, but had assumed that it was a haircut thing. So it was only a little bit embarassing that at dinner I brought up this topic and was corrected by a middle aged man who probably thought I was absolutely insane. They look very different! And have different names!

2. Little sweets called Love Hearts. Compacted sherbert with sweet nothings written on them. "You're nice", "I love you", "Text me" sort of things. We all had a mini pack of them at our dinner places. Yum! Eventually I got round to opening them and was quite happy to find the first one said "just married" on it. I figured it would make a great thing to give to the bride and groom. They weren't around at the time, but I left it with Cathy's mum. Went back to my seat, started on the rest of the sweets. They all said the same thing on them. There were about 1000 Love Hearts in the room saying "Just Married" on them. Felt a bit silly...

Today I didn't go and see the meercats

Day two of the holiday. Wedding is in about an hour, but I've nothing to do until then. Went for a little walk this morning, a couple of miles up the road to Ambleside. And back. Had a cup of tea outside a nice little cafe there, which was my seventh of the morning (!).

It's a reasonably nice weather day. Bit cloudy, but warm enough. Three things I will not be doing this evening:
1. Cake Diving
2. Swearing at motorists.
3. Laughing at the big wooden squirrel.

And there is a huge monkey puzzle tree outside the hotel. Apparently (according to Jenny), there is the largest such tree in Europe somewhere near here. It may or may not be the one outside. It's not easy to tell just by looking. Asking the tree "Hello Mr Tree. Are you the biggest tree of your kind in these parts?" will not tend to evoke an answer. Because trees can't talk.

Hello! I've gone away! Can you still hear me?

Well since I'm out in The Lake District, I'm unable to blog properly - not intending to pay the extortionate hotel phone costs. 25p a unit sounds expensive to me and I've no idea how long a "unit" is. So I'm writing this anyway and I'll post it (with backdated times if I can) once I get home. As if I'd never been away, except I'll be writing about things I wouldn't be writing about if I was at home.

The hotel seems pleasant enough. I've got two twin beds rather than a double which is a bit annoying. Even though I spent pretty much the whole of my first 21 years of life in single beds, now they just seem way too small. Like I'm going to fall out if I twitch the wrong way. My friend Jenny is in the room next door, currently I'm waiting for her to have a bath. I expect she'd thank me for letting the world know that. When she's done, I intend to head down to the bar and start getting drunk. Since it is a wedding tomorrow and all. Then head over to the other hotel (where the actual wedding is) after dinner to see the happy couple on the final day of singledom.

The train journey here went fairly well - had to stand for about 20 mins (between Manchester and Preston I think) even though I had a seat booked. I guess I could have booted the person out of my seat, but I'd have felt bad. So best to stand and sulk instead. And had to wait twenty minutes for a taxi at Windermere Station which was a pain. Stop complaining already! I'm here to have a good time, not spend the whole time moaning! Happy thoughts. And I have some happy thoughts I think.

The hangover from yesterday has pretty much gone now. I think I drank too much wine. And I think also that I mentioned that earlier. I appear to have banged my forehead somehow - it's a bit sore and there's a small red mark. No recollection of how I might have done that. Got a load of free drinks paid for by The Company, so I reckon a small bang on the head is a price worth paying. Hey - wouldn't it be great if you could always get free drinks just by hitting yourself a bit! Might be confusing cause and effect a bit there.

And now Jenny has turned up (all clean now) so I'll leave this here.

Fancy a brew?

I mentioned a while ago that this day was coming, and here it is: The final day that that the joyous duo, Mark and Lard are on Radio 1. Both are moving to new stations, Mark Radcliffe to late night Radio 2 and Marc Riley to 6Music. They've given me many happy faces during their time on the radio. The old ten til midnight slot got me through university. I think I wrote a letter to them once, but never sent it. No recollection now what it was about, but I think I'd found a funny picture in a newspaper.

And then their brief time on the breakfast show... the only word that really sums that up is "Legendary". Pixie dancing...

And then to the afternoon show - sadly at a time when I've never been able to listen on a regular basis, due to being at work. Favourite part of that one? Probably Lard's vinyl record collection. Old songs that skip all over the place in such a way so that the songs are much more offensive and funny than the original artists intended them to be. The final show today - hopefully I'll be able to listen to it on the train if the reception holds up. Nicely, I'll be reaching Manchester where the show is based, just as they finish broadcasting. I'm expecting crowds on the street.

And of course it's not only their radio show they'll be remebered for. They formed an amazing band, The Shirehorses and released two great albums - "The worst album in the world...ever...EVER!" and "Our Kid Eh". Both far too funny. Lard used to be in The Fall - an interesting and useless fact. I'd write more, but really to need to go and get that train soon.

I'll miss you guys.

Stupid wine

Head. Ache. Ow. And I need to do my packing and iron a shirt. Shouldn'd be wasting time writing this nonsense. Stupid wine. Head. Ache.

Going to a wedding

I'm off to a wedding tomorrow, which is quite exciting (Congrats Cathy + Rich) . I think it's the first wedding I'll have been to which is the wedding of one of my friends, as opposed to family, one of my sister's friends, or one of my ex-girlfriend's friends. So I need to iron some shirts this afternoon. And work out what I need to take. And make sure I've got all the chargers I need - potentially at least 4, which is just dumb. Why can't all my things use the same bloomin' charger? Or at the very least, why can't items made by the same company use the same charger??? Grrr....

So anyway, back to the wedding. One thing I can't remember - are you supposed to give the happy couple a card if you actually turn up? I know that people who don't go send cards, but what about us that do? I've bought one anyway to be on the safe side.

Presidential Bands

Here's a new game, we all like games don't we? Right - easy rules. All you have to do is name bands with US president's surnames in their names. And I'm not allowing silly ones. So, for example, "The Dead Kennedys" is allowed, because it is a band name and contains the surname of a president (Kennedy for anybody really stupid that has stumbled along to this post). But "The Clinton Boon Experience" is not allowed as it should just be Clint, not Clinton. Oh, and solo artists don't count either (special arbitrary rule)

I have eight (whooh!) so far: -
- The Dead Kennedys
- Carter, The Unstoppable Sex Machine
- Bush
- The Kennedy Soundtrack
- Lincoln
- Grant Lee Buffalo
- Madison Avenue
- Wilson Pickett

Any more anyone? Alternatively, can you do the same with UK Prime Ministers (bit harder...)

Reader Survey Results!

The results of the reader survey are now in. Let's get to know one another...

Q1: Hello! Who and how are you?
50% of you are fine. That's nice. And 17% of you are drunk. The rest are doing ok too, in less specific ways. Oh, and I'm fine too, thanks for asking. Isn't this fun?

Q2: Do you like the colours displayed on this page? Would you prefer something bluer?
Interesting answers here. Most popular was along the lines of "Pink's a bit gay". The only specific answer to the second question was quite anti-blue.

Q3: Have you or a friend ever been offended by anything written on these pages?
I'm not someone who normally sets out to cause offense, so it was sad to hear that I have offended 1/3 of you. I did this by mentioning the excellent band, Franz Ferdinand, who appear to be disliked by some people, and by talking about beards, or rather the removal of said items with razors. Ha! Like I care. Franz F are one of the best new bands to have emerged last year, "Darts of Pleasure" was fantastic. And beards are and always will be funny.

Q4: Are you a foxy single girl?
83% of you claim to not be foxy single girls - A surprising result? Not really. What is more surprising was that one of the people in this category claimed that although he himself was not a FSG, he had met some recently. There was no evidence provided as to the truth of this claim, so I believe it is safe to treat it as a delusion.

Q5: Do you enjoy my topics? Would you like more: a) honest critiques of my life; b) info on my (lack of) love life; c) poetry
33% of you would like more poetry! Whilst that isn't quite a majority, I'm in charge here, I make the rules, so there will be more poetry. In fact, same thing applies to a) and b). It's my blog and I'll blog what I want to :-) You don't have to read it.

Q6: I have recorded several cover versions of songs into mp3. Would you like to be able to hear them?
A unanimous "yes" here! You are all suffering from insania! Ok, just wait for me to get something set up. And of course you now also have my original songs to look forward to too!

Q7: Do you have a blog or website?
Some of you do, some of you don't. Ones that work I am linking to on the left. Bert, you could try writing something longer than a line one day?

Q8: Who killed Laura Palmer?
One correct answer to this one. Well done respondent no. 5. I shan't reveal the killer here, as I don't want to spoil it for those of you who never saw Twin Peaks. But to the person who thought Cock Robin killed Laura, I must sadly disillusion you. Cock Robin did not kill anyone, and was in fact himself killed by the sparrow. If you click here, you can see the whole story along with some charming pictures. Incidentally - I was quite dubious about what I'd find when I typed "Cock Robin" into Google...

Q9: If you are someone who knows me, what should I do differently in life in order to be more successful?
Too lazy to recount the various answers here, but suffice to say, I have listened to each and every one of you.

Q10: If you answered "Yes" to Q4, where have you been all my life?
USA, Australia and Tokyo apparently. Given the answers to Q4, I find these answers slightly surprising.

Thanks again to everyone who took time to answer this. What was the point of it again...?

This is not a song about politics...

Watch out world. I've now written and recorded my first ever song. Not the happiest song I've ever heard (though it is the happiest song I've ever written!). And I think I've got more in me.

Results of the reader survey should be out later. Bet you're all really excited by that prospect.

From the East Coast of Yorkshire to the South Pacific

I was out on a walk in the countryside yesterday, over at Robin Hood's Bay. The pictures on the village website have somehow managed to make the village look quite flat. This is odd as I distinctly remember the place having a really steep long hill which a large part of the village was on. Never trust a photograph...

Quite a pleasant walk, the rain held off, and we only hit a few snags. After a couple of miles we came to a farm. The book that was guiding us around the paths of North Yorkshire indicated that we should go through the farm. Our eyes indicated that this would not be possible. Unless we actually went inside and through the farmhouse ("Hello Mrs Farmer! Yes, thank you, we'd love a glass of homemade ginger beer!"), or climbed over a digger that was thoroughly blocking the only other possible egress. Hmmm, what to do... Luckily a farmhand appeared and gestured to us, in his own yokel fashion, that we should climb over the digger. What fun. So then onwards.

The other main danger was the countryside itself. The clifftop walk is falling slowly but steadily into the sea. Not with us on it (this time at least), but there were a few bits where the landslips had been obviously fairly recent. We survived. Which suited me as plummeting 80m to my splatty death on jagged rocks is not my idea of a perfect Sunday afternoon. I don't recall Lou Reed singing "It's such a perfect day, I'm glad I fell to my doom". On a (vaguely) related topic, I was reading today about the origins of bungee jumping. Apparently it originated on Pentecost Island in the South Pacific. The natives there used to find a big tree, strip the surrounding area, and till the soil below the tree until it was all soft. The menfolk (isn't it always the men that do this sort of thing?) would then, as part of some kind of rite or ritual, climb one by one to the top of the tree, tie vines to their ankles, make a speech, and jump off, headfirst. Note that they were diving onto what was effectively the floor, rather than a wussy river or lake as people tend to do today. Most of the time they survived.

The reason why they do this? Apprently several thousand years ago, a man there had been beating his wife, and she ran away. Sensible girl. She ran into the forest, but the man chased her, presumbaly because he hadn't quite finished his beating. She climbed a tree to get away, but the husband followed, so in desperation, she tied vines to her ankles and jumped off. The husband followed but neglected to use vines. She survived, he didn't. So now the men practice jumping off trees with vines attached to them, so that should they have occasion to beat a wife all the way up a tree in future, they'll not make the same mistake as their ancestor. A lesson for us all there.

So then onwards to Whitby (that's me travelling onwards, not the inhabitants of Pentecost Island. I've finished that little story now) for Fish and Chips. I think we may have eaten in Whitby's top nitespot. Really. The party hadn't really kicked off yet (or indeed started), but the food was certainly better than expected given the quality of the venue. I think I shall not visit in the evening though. It looked grim.

International Terrorism - A Survival Guide

The people in the news and government etc seem to be warning us of a potential Al Qaeda attack here in the UK. Scary stuff. So I've been thinking about ways that we can help mitigate any adverse effects from such a strike. Here are Lint's top 10 ways of avoiding harm from terrorists:

1. Chemical and biological attacks can potentially be quite nasty. They may cause skin irritation or lead to a mild cough. However, extensive research has led me to believe that there is a simple potential solution: the damp cloth hankerchief. Simply placing said item over your nose and mouth guarantees to stop all known small scale items entering your system. I am yet to determine whether monographed hankies have additional helpful properties - watch this space.

2. Terrorists sometimes use disguises in order to pass unnoticed in our society. This means that anyone could be a bad person. The man who sold you the newspaper this morning. The woman who checked your ticket on the train. The guy jogging by the lake earlier. The small boy stood 4 ft behind you at the moment (no! don't look, it'll alert him!). Hence you need a foolproof method of terrorist detection. Here's the one I recommend: If you suspect someone of being a terrorist, Shoot Them Dead with your crossbow. Then there is no way they will commit an heinous act, even if they had no intention of doing so in the first place (this tip sponsored by George and Tony).

3. Avoid dark places. I've seen a lot of films and often bad stuff happens to people in dark places (caves, attics, cinemas, KFC etc). Terrorists do bad stuff. Hence you will maximise your chances of survival by staying out of the dark. Thinking about this more closely, you may lengthen your life by staying out of KFC full stop.

4. Live in a quiet hamlet miles from any likely targets. You'll be safe from terrorism. Sadly though, if English crime novels are to believed, this will give you maybe a 90% chance of being murdered by somebody that nobody suspected until page 254. A similar thing happens on TV crime dramas, but you need to replace "page 254" with "the 84th minute".

5. Practice running away from loud noises really quickly.

6. It's common knowledge that 86.3% of terrorists have beards. If you see a bearded gentleman or lady near you, it is therefore your responsibility to alert all people near you to this fact. Recommended phrases are "Excuse me - there's a man over there with facial hair! Be on your guard!", "Watch out everyone, we may have a beard situation" and "Arrrggghhhh! I have the fear! Help! Beard! Help!".

7. To avoid being caught in a terrorist incident, simply avoid all likely places that could be targeted. And also avoid all other people - they might be suicide bombers, or smelly. I make no promises that this is easy, but a couple of good safe hang outs spring to mind - Lincolnshire is an obvious one, as nothing interesting ever has or ever will happen there. Also The Moon should be reasonably safe for a few years, but you will need to provide your own Human-suitable environment, and watch out for the Monolith. They are already 3 years late discovering it, but we all know it's there...

8. Keep practising the running away - really, it's important! Run!

9. Stay away from bins. These are apparently great places to put explosive devices which is why they were all removed from our train stations years and years ago. There are still bins elsewhere however, and they could be dangerous so try and stay as far away from them as possible. If you need to dispose of rubbish, either practise throwing it into a bin from a safe distance (ie approximately 4 miles), or work on becoming one of those people who can eat anything - paper, cardboard, metal, plastic etc. Also, this skill will impress your friends at parties! (Do you go to parties much? Can I come please?).

10. Persuade your governments and all the other governments and all the people everywhere to just try being nice to each other all the time. Radical, I know.

These 10 simple tips should help to make the UK a safer place. Play nicely everyone!

Damp Legs

My what bally horrible weather! Yes, the wind and rain are back in full force (though currently it's not actually raining and is actually quite sunny). Looking out of my window earlier it occasionally looked like the rain had stopped as the splashes in the puddles went away. But in fact all that was happening was the rain was being blown pretty much horizontally. And into this I had to go to find a haircut, some nice wine and some crisps. It's the first time I can remember them having to blow dry my hair before cutting it. I'm back home now and my trousers are very damp. Ick.

Last day!

It'll be my last day at work for a couple of weeks today. I'm not actually going away sadly (apart from for a couple of days), and in fact I have no real idea what I'm going to do. I'm only really taking the time off as I have loads of unused holiday that I need to use before my birthday, or I lose it. I asked my boss yesterday if, seeing as how it would be my last day today, if I could bring in games like we used to in school. He said no.

I can't believe how lazy my friends are

Sorry guys, but I can't let this one go. I've just been out in town for a bit of food and some drinks with (amongst others) a couple of friends who currently live in London. For the purposes of this, I'll call them W and A. Not their real names, their real names have more letters. It'd have to be a pretty psychotic parent that called their son (or daughter) W. (Or possibly even gave them that as a middle name. Hmm almost approaching satire. Not quite, maybe give me a few more weeks and I'll get the hang of it). We were approx 15 minutes walk from both my flat, and the place they were staying. And they made us all get a taxi! Lazy B**t**ds! "I've got a big heavy bag". No you haven't! It's teeny tiny bag! About the size of a cereal box! Now I could have protested more and refused to get in the taxi and just walked home myself, but that would have achieved nothing. By joining the taxi, I have saved maybe 10 minutes of my life, which I have decided to use to type this. I repeat: Walk! It's what God/Evolution/Cybernetics (delete according to personal beliefs) gave you legs for. Help save what little of the planet we can...

List time

I feel like doing a list today. Here we go:

1. A girl in my year at University who was in my college now presents the childrens news programme on the BBC. Don't think I ever spoke to her.
2. I need a hair cut. Meant to go last Saturday but was too lazy.
3. I'm heading into town in a while and it's absolutely pissing it down outside. Hopefully it won't last all night. Was that thunder just then?
4. Pay rise and bonus today - wahey. Maybe I'll start off my car-fund.
5. Managed to get a grade 'A' on "Size of a cow". My dancing is on fire! (or so the game tells me).
6. Note to self: Avoid Irish pubs on St Patrick's Day.
7. Ground Control to Major Tom: Take your protein pills and put your helmet on.
8. I bought some fennel tea. It's quite nice if you like things to taste of aniseed.
9. The day before yesterday I disappointed myself. I bought a nice bit of lamb and some potatoes, but couldn't be arsed to cook the potatoes so had (cooked) frozen potato waffles instead.
10. Ground Control to Major Tom: Your circuit's dead, there's something wrong.
11. Time for a quick play on the gee-tar before going out? Yes: I think there might be. As long as this list doesn't go on much longer.
12. This is a rubbish list.
13. It's stopped raining now.

( :-) )

When I'm writing I tend to use parentheses quite a lot (possibly a sign of bad sentence structure) and have found a problem to which I'm sure there must be a standard solution. The question is: How do you put a smiley at the end of some bracketed words without it looking stupid. For example: (Here are some words in brackets :-) ) just looks a bit silly to me. My eyes keep telling me there's a bracket missing at the start. Is it just me? Maybe it's fine...

Actuary Spleen

I was bored this evening, danced out, so here is a third post. Like I said I was bored, so I started Googlewhacking, trying to find one with the words actuary or actuarial in. I failed again. But whilst trying "actuary spleen" (yes, I know I'd be better off trying longer words - but I could have gotten lucky!) I did stumble onto an interesting website. It is the website of one Matthew Edwards, a chap who once tutored me in the arcane art of actuarial exam D2. He wore a hat, I passed first time, job well done Sir.

Mr Edwards is also the editor of the magazine "The Actuary". Believe it or not, that is the magazine of the UK actuarial profession. And regular readers of said magazine will be aware of his love of words. So with that I point you to Here, where he does amusing things with certain works of literature and a "Dear Appointed Actuary" letter using an N+7 transformation. Really. Better than it sounds. Elsewhere on the site you can find the complete text of a novel he's written, "Archibald and the Killer Daffodils". To whet your appetite, here are some of the chapter titles: "Put that hamster down, or it'll be the last hamster you ever stroke!", "... it had been some time since he had last brought forty-five Chinese girls to orgasm ..." and "Would his curvaceous falsies be up to the pressure?". I promise I am not making this up.

Dance 'til it hurts...

I bought myself a dance mat on Friday, the electronic kind that you plug into a games console. I've wanted one for ages, but so far there hadn't been one released for the Xbox. Loads of dancin' games out for the PS2, but I'm not having one of them ugly boxes under my telly (mainly cos I've run out of room what with all the other boxes under there). So this is the first chance I've had to get my hands (and feet) on one. I had a go in a bowling alley a couple of years ago. What I learnt then was: Take off your big wooly jumper before dancing. And also: Dancing games are fun, and probably more fun if nobody can see you, at least until you get good at it.

The one I have actually has some decent tunes on it too, as well as a load of dancey nonsense. Tunes by Blondie, The Inspiral Carpets, The Libertines and The Wonderstuff amongst others. Which just adds to the fun.

What I hadn't realised is how hot and sweaty they make you. It's like doing proper exercise. And I'm enjoying it. Today I did about 35mins between getting up and having a shower, and the same again after work. I think I've gone weird. Early morning exercising is not me. Pressing the snooze button four or five times, now that's me. I'm getting quite achy too (yes, I know - it's from the exercise). Although not as achy now as I was at first. My scores are definitely improving. Couldn't get to the end of a song at first, but now I have a load of 'A' grades. And I can get through some of the songs on the intermediate difficulty level too. I think the hard level is just in there as a joke.

How long will this enthusiasm for dancing last? Who can tell... I say one thing here and now - to paraphrase Mr T, I ain't getting in no gym.

Angel go bye bye!

Right. I know I'm slightly behind the times here, with news that is over a month old, but. THEY"VE CANCELLED ANGEL!!!! Argghh! Bad Warner Bros. It was one of the best things on telly. Pooh. On the bright side, I still have season 5 to watch at some point when it comes out on DVD.

More Exciting than 24:

08:45. So I manage to get myself out of bed a bit earlier than normal this morning and make it into work for quarter to nine - "well done" I think to myself. And then my boss points out to me that I was supposed to be in a big meeting quarter of an hour earlier which I had utterly forgotten about - what sort of evil mastermind would plan a meeting for half eight on a Monday Morning?!! I attempt to print off the agenda, and realise I'm stuck in the printer queue behind someone printing a mammoth document, 100 pages or so. Eventually that clears and my single page pops out, and I'm sure it would have taken half the time if I'd just sat and copied the words from the computer screen with a pen. I love the modern technology.

08:55. I'm now at least 25 mins late, but it's an hour and a half long, so I can probably still get away with it. The meeting is not in the building I work in, it's over the road. I have no idea whereabouts inside, but it's on the Upper Ground Floor - how hard can that be to find? I get in the lift, as that makes it easy to just press the UG button - problem solved. But there is no UG Button, just a G and a 1. UG must be somewhere between those (thoughts of Being John Malkovich start to enter my head). And as I realise this, the doors close and I'm off up to the fifth floor. Or I would be if the lift I'm in wasn't psychotic (or maybe just a bit broken). Every time someone gets out, the doors just stay open. The only way to get them to close seems to be to push them very hard , which the large man left in the lift with me seems to be enjoying doing slightly too much. If you hit them enough times they close. Some time later I'm at the fifth floor and can start to go down again. I make it down one floor and then someone else gets in, and that's it, the lift ain't going anywhere. So I do what I should have done ages before and move to a different lift. Which at least works and gets me back to where I started. 09:05, tick, tick, tick.

I ask the guy at reception where the room is (why didn't I think of that earlier? Genius!). It's over behind reception up some stairs through a door that looks more like a cupboard. Down a little corridor and finally I find the room. I wouldn't have been surprised at this point if there had been a sign on the door saying Beware Of The Leopard. The room's empty. Should be about 15 people in there, but there is not a single one. I head back to my desk and make some phone calls. Apparently the meeting moved to a room on the floor above my desk. Thanks for telling me guys! It must be getting on 9:15 by now. Never mind.

I get there make my excuses and sit down and have a rather dull time. But I got a cup of tea and a very nice biscuit (09:25), silver lining and all that. And someone else turned up even later which made me feel better. Tick, tick - another catastrophe avoided.

Just get over it!

Back on that old favourite topic again today - H. That's the ex-girl, not the Heroin variety. I state here and now that I have not ever had such a problem. Or indeed been addicted to anything for that matter. Although I suppose love is a kind of addiction. And I've had that a couple a times, so maybe I'm not entirely unfamiliar with it after all. I think I'm rambling... focus... ok, I've got the focus.

I seem to have been thinking about the whole break-up thing a lot recently - and probably more objectively than I have in the past. Don't think it's been triggered by anything in particular, but I just seem to keep coming back to it. And I think there are a load of things that I never really talked about with anyone at the time, so that they just kind of stick inside and fester which can't be healthy - "fester" just reminds me of maggots, and possibly the Addams Family - neither of which I particularly want to have inside me. So I think there may be a few of these posts over the next few weeks until I've got it all out of my system, even if it is painful at times to write about it. Hope I'm not boring too many of you. Don't worry I'm sure I'll be back to my normal nonsensical self soon.

The thing I'm going to talk about today ("today's Lecture is on...") is whether or not I saw it coming. I know at the time it came as a complete shock, but possibly I was kidding myself. Certainly I can look back now and see that there were signs. Here are some signs. I won't claim that they are all genuine, I could easily have been reading things that weren't really there.

Sign 1: She was working very late at work, pretty much every day. To avoid me, or because it was very busy at work (which it was)?
Sign 2: Some nights after work she'd go back to Lod's flat until very late.
Sign 3: A weekend badminton game with Lod that lasted until late into the evening
Sign 4: There were a couple of times when she wouldn't let me even touch her at night.
Sign 5: A semi-overheard phone call to one of her best friends. I seem to remember H asking whether "girl on phone" regretted dumping her long term boyfriend or not. Or I could have utterly misheard :-)

There were other little things too - sometimes you just get a feeling. I pretty much tried to ignore it all cos there was no way I could bring myself to believe things had somehow gone wrong. And even though I knew she was spending time with Lod, there was absolutely no way I could conceive of anything romantic happening between them (since he is a gimp). Especially as I was in love, and thought she was as well (with me). Hell, I probably would have proposed at some point last year. And when you feel that way, it's almost impossible to conceive of something happening that changes your future plans in such a fundamental way.

So I had clues that something might be wrong, but I figured (in my usual way) that if I just ignored them, things would get better, everything would blow over. But it didn't. I don't suppose that confronting her would have made things any better, especially as she refused to admit to seeing Lod until about three weeks later. It would probably have just accelerated the final moment, and at the same time could have made me feel like I contributed to bringing on the break-up myself.

I guess I must have had some contribution to it - these things don't after all happen for no reason, but I don't really know, even now, what I did wrong (apart from getting drunk and falling over at Christmas). Now call me old fashioned, but isn't it normal when you're in a relationship to give the other person a second chance? Or is it normal to come home, dump someone after nearly 5 years, refuse to try and find a way to work things out and then just leave?

So I was just left there sitting on the sofa, trying to understand what had just happened. Absolutely shellshocked. I don't really remember what I did - I guess I could have gone to the toilet (not on the sofa) or had a drink or something, but I think I just sat there for hours. I guess I would have cried a lot. I didn't even resort to getting pissed (that age old problem solver) - I guess I knew that wouldn't actually help matters. I remember trying to convince myself that I had imagined or dreamt the final conversation - surely there was no way that could have just happened? I was hoping that she'd come in later and everything would just be ok again. I think it's a similar thing to when someone close to you dies - you often hear people talking about expecting the deceased to just come back home again as if they'd never died. But it never happens that way (except in Pet Semetary, but I don't think that was based on real events).

Maybe I should have phoned a friend or something and got them to come round, would that have helped? But I didn't want to speak to anyone because telling someone else what had happened would have made it real, whereas if I kept it to myself there was that slim chance that it wasn't real, I'd just been hallucinating, and that there was no problem.

And that was pretty much all I did when I was in the house for the next few days. Just sit on the sofa, and wait, and think, and hope that somehow things would get better, that I'd get a second chance, because I just couldn't accept that I would be able to go on without her.

It has been pointed out to me that there are some people that read this blog that I would not have expected to be reading. Or I may have dreamt it. Wish I could get that handle on reality. So, on that little basis, here is the first Lintworld Reader Survey:

Q1: Hello! Who and how are you?

Q2: Do you like the colours displayed on this page? Would you prefer something bluer?

Q3: Have you or a friend ever been offended by anything written on these pages?

Q4: Are you a foxy single girl?

Q5: Do you enjoy my topics? Would you like more: a) honest critiques of my life; b) info on my (lack of) love life; c) poetry

Q6: I have recorded several cover versions of songs into mp3. Would you like to be able to hear them?

Q7: Do you have a blog or website?

Q8: Who killed Laura Palmer?

Q9: If you are someone who knows me, what should I do differently in life in order to be more successful?

Q10: If you answered "Yes" to Q4, where have you been all my life?

Answers to lint_1@hotmail.com, or as comments on this post. Please: I really would value your input. Please answer Q1 if nothing else.

Cheers y'all.

A review of a gig what I went to last night (6)

This is the first Saturday for several weeks where I have been up and out of bed before 10am. Inc-redible.

I was never a huge fan of Blur - there was something in their sound that never quite gelled with me, although they did obviously bang out a few classic songs from time to time. And some rubbish ones too (Hello "Beetlebum"). Their lead guitarist, one Graham Coxon, left the band a couple of years ago to pursue a solo career. He was playing in York last night so I went along, though didn't really expect much from him. But I was wrong - he was great! I knew the new single was great (which is the only solo song of his that I'd heard) but was very pleasantly surprised by the rest of them. Almost felt like a whole set of Blur playing "Song 2" and "Popscene", which if you're in the mood for it makes a great punk-pop evening.

Great support band too. Bloc Party. I'd never heard of them, but they were good fun in an At The Drive In / The Fall kind of way. Forever!

At York Fibbers last night were at least: 2 actuaries and 3 actuarial trainees. Which gives an AR(SE) factor of 3.5, so giving a (joint) top of the table position. Here's the table:

3.5: Easyworld / Snow Patrol 1 / Graham Coxon
2.5 Four Day Hombre / Snow Patrol 2
2.0: Delays / Athlete

Next up The Open at the end of the month.

Wish I was still in bed

There really isn't enough time on Friday mornings. Someone should sort that out.

On a lighter note...

Think of all the websites that you ever heard about,
Like for education, shopping, and banking.
There are lots of funny websites out in all the world,
But have you ever seen a weblog that is pink?
Think!
A weblog that is positively pink?
Well here it is it's Lint's weblog, it's Lint's weblog,
Everybody loves a weblog that's pink.
Lint really is a groovy cat,
Cos he's a gentleman, an actuary, and an acrobat!
It's in the pink, is Lint's weblog, the rinky pink weblog,
And it's as plain as your nose:
That it's the one and only truly original,
Weblog pink from head to toes.
Yeah it's the one and only truly original,
Weblog, pink weblog from head to toes.

-*ahem*-

Hear the original here if you're bored...

Our survey says...

This may turn into something of a rant. Hey isn't the internet wonderful. This one's probably been coming for a while, but it seemed appropriate for today.

A young chap that I talk to on occasion came up to me at work this morning, completely out of the blue, and mentioned that he'd met a certain unnamed person at 5-a-side for the first time the previous evening and thought that they were a complete "tw*t". "Well done" thinks I, "thanks for sharing that with me. Why do I need to know this?". After a slight elaboration on the part of the other guy (whose anonymity I shall preserve here), it turns out he was talking about the current boyfriend of my ex-girl, the one she started seeing before dumping my good self.

(Slight Diversion: I can't actually prove the bit about her seeing him before breaking up with me, but it is pretty suspicious that they were sending Valentines cards to each other only 10 days later. Not to mention a lot of circumstantial evidence prior to that. Including some smells.)

Anyway, I found this relatively amusing. I've never actually spoken to the "tw*t" myself (and from here on in I shall refer to him as Lod, a joke which only I will understand, but there you go, it's my blog and if I want to have private jokes I can), so I can only really base my opinion of him on what he's done and on what other people have said about him. But I can't actually remember anybody ever saying anything good about him. I can remember people saying "arrogant", "tw*t", "boring", "f***er", "bald" and several others, but never anything positive. Actually "bald" was me, but that was objective based on facts observed with my eyes. "Orange" was an interesting word someone said about him at one point. And some of the worse words came from normally quite mild-mannered people.

The negativity is perhaps not surprising as a lot of it is from my friends who to some extent will just be trying to make me feel better. But not all of it is from them. Some of it was from work colleagues (his as well as mine). Some of it was from near-strangers. For example, one time in a pub I was chatting to someone for (pretty much) the first time and he started talking about Lod, who he had been working with earlier that day. Well, I say talking, it was mostly complaining and swearing. Don't think he liked him very much and I certainly won't repeat stuff here (as my memory isn't great). But this guy had no idea who I was, or of my link to Lod, so I think I can take it as a slightly more objective opinion. He was drunk, mind, but then that doesn't make him wrong. Just louder and more annoying.

I've left plenty of things left unsaid here, and it's probably a good thing that I'm completely sober as I write, but all the evidence keeps pointing to one thing: Lod is not a nice man. And he is apparently a very dirty football player. Sorry, that was two things. If anyone wants to propose a counter-view, "Lod is a great guy" kinda thing, then please feel free to use the comment facility, people should have a right to reply after all.

Why should I care any more? It has after all been over a year now since it all ended. Well, I probably shouldn't care. Just let it all go. But it would be good if he went away as then a) York would be a nicer place; b) I don't much like having to avoid people at work and in social occasions; and c) I could maybe actually be friends with H again, which believe it or not, I would like to be. She did after all used to be my best friend as well as all the rest. But I guess she's made her choice...

A review of a gig what I went to last night (5)

As foretold yesterday, I went to Leeds to see Snow Patrol last night. It was at a venue I'd not been to before - The Blank Canvas. To get to it you pass through many tunnels and bridges over smelly streams - feels quite subterranean, and the feeling of nearby trolls was strong. The venue itself is inside a load of old railway arches and although technically "inside" it feels quite exposed. But it does get very warm later on due to the amount of people packed in there. Lots of people. Some of them very strange looking. I'm sure students are getting scruffier by the month. With dafter hair. Back in my day all students constantly wore smart suits, had neatly clipped hair, and certainly had no piercings. Youth of today? Pah.

Music quality inside was not bad, but the bar wasn't great - overpriced bottled beer only (though consequently service was quite quick). At 6'2" I could see the stage fine, but as usual there were lots of shorter people (ie mostly girls) who really have no chance of seeing anything except tall people (ie mostly boys) like me. Which is potentially not what they've paid their money for. But really, they've brought it on themselves. The way I see it, if they wanted to watch live bands they should have swam away from that second X chromosone during conception. It displays a distinct lack of foresight and planning.

So onto the music. Snow Patrol still great. Good to see a few older songs in the set too (esp. "One night is not enough"), as they seem to have moved on from solely promoting the last album. The band started off doing that thing where they sulk a bit because various technical things aren't working properly - I couldn't tell anything was wrong, but maybe either things sound different on stage, or I just can't spot the things that aren't there. Sounded fine to me. And as a special Brucie Bonus, they finished at a time such that we could get the train home without having to rush, run or miss it.

At The Blank Canvas last night were at least: 2 actuaries and 1 actuarial trainee. Which gives an AR(SE) factor of 2.5, comfortably mid table and failing to beat their previous score of 3.5. Here's the table:

3.5: Easyworld / Snow Patrol 1
2.5 Four Day Hombre / Snow Patrol 2
2.0: Delays / Athlete

Next up Graham Coxon at Fibbers on Friday.

A preview of a gig what I will be going to tonight (5)

Off to Leeds this evening to see Snow Patrol & Astrid (review here later). Should be good, SP were great earlier in the year when I saw them. And it will mean the return of the AR(SE) table which I know you will all have missed.

Lost and Lost

They say that you never know what you've got until it's gone. Maybe. What is definitely true is that you don't realise something's gone until you look for it and find that you don't seem to have it any more. Case in point: I've just been looking for my A-Z of Bristol, to help someone at work plan a treasure hunt there. I lived there for nearly a year on a work secondment a while back, and the map was invaluable for finding my way round (no sh*t, Sherlock) whilst flat-hunting. And now I was intending it to find a new brief second lease of life as a pub crawl route planner / memory jogger.

So I'm looking round my second bedroom for it, the only sensible place it can be. Lucky all the Tat has gone now - Lovely Puppy would have not been a good aid to map finding (or to anything else). And I can find the London A-Z, and the Norwich A-Z, but the Bristol & Bath A-Z? No not a peek, not hide nor hair or even a suasage. It's gone. And the only place it could sensibly be is still somewhere in my ex-girlfriend's house where I used to live and didn't need a map. Which is really unfair because that would mean that she now has two copies of it and I have none. And that just starts to depress me a bit as I always feel down when I think of her. And I also then think, not for the first time, that you never know what you've got until it's gone.

Television - the drug of the nation

I finished watching series 4 of Angel this afternoon. Given that I only received in in the post at around 11.30pm last Monday, I've got through it pretty quickly - under six days. This maybe just indicates that I am A Bit Sad, or it could be an indication of the quality of the show. You decide. But with that out of the way, maybe I can concentrate on attempting to finish reading my book. The same one that I've been reading since New Year. It's good, but I seem to be going really slowly which is unusual for me. I counted up the unread books on my shelf and there are around 30 of them, which seems to be a faintly ridiculous number. And some of them I'm quite looking forward to reading. Some of them have sat there for years already and are beginning to fall under the suspicion that they'll never be read.

Lost and found.

Had sushi again yesterday. Thought I'd left my scarf there (but was too lazy to check when I was in town earlier). But I hadn't - it was round at a friend's place. That I had forgotten I had been to. Oops.

Bye bye Tat

I have got my second bedroom back. Not literally, it hadn't been spirited away to a different dimension, or been infested with rats or anything, but it has been full of what I can only call Tat. Not even my Tat (of which there is too much) - it was Tat of friends who moved house last weekend and due to some slight oddness with the timings of when they left the old house and moved into the new one, they needed some temporary storage. I could have sold some of it on eBay or had a bonfire (I don't expect they'd have noticed). Highlights of the Tat included: An Electronic Hobby Horse (which talks and plays galloping music); a big black bin bag full of shoes (I'm sorry, but nobody needs that many shoes); and Lovely Puppy, an electronic puppy that is not in any sense of the word lovely - Ugly Wispy Puppy would be a better name. Plus a load of stuff in boxes which I din't dare even peek at - might have given me nightmares.

So I can use the room again now. Except I don't use it at all, as it has no bed. Need to get that sorted out (it would also stop my parents complaining - actually I think my mum secretly likes sleeping on an airbed on the floor when she stays - she thinks it's like camping). And need some more shelves in it too, or maybe just need to have a clearout of my own.

Here's the essay

So anyway, I was on this pub crawl/quiz/treasure hunt last week and I wrote an essay. Here now, for the first time on the interweb is the full text. Sadly it's not quite as funny as it seemed at the time, but there's beer for you. Cheers to the organisers for typing it up.

Hansel and Gretel, victims or vandals? Discuss.

The story of Hansel and Gretel has caused argument amongst many of the finest minds of the 20th Century. Freud, Chomsky and Lenin all had differing opinions. The passage of time helps us to put more perspective on the events that unfolded back in 832AD. We can now see that Chomsky and Lenin were numbskulls. Freud alone had the right idea when he said in his 1960 paper 'Why Hansel should have been shot', "Hansel and Gretel are nothing better than pikey scum. Lock them all up I say!"

When Hansel went out on that fateful day he had no intention of being 'lost'. He'd been aware for weeks that his stepmother was planning to kill him and his cute little sister. So in the weeks beforehand he explored every inch of the forest. Simon Schama says in The History of Britain: "Hansel explored every inch of the forest".

What he found in the forest, Hansel saw as a potential saviour. A Gingerbread House! It would contain enough food to sustain him and his sister for many months - Hansel at this point set on his course. He would eat that house. That's what he's gonna do. He's gonna eat that house. He had no regard for any owner. All he cared about was his own well-being.

History is murky about how Hansel managed to bribe the poor man sent into the forest to kill him and his poorer sibling. It's likely he'd stolen some gold and used this. Michael Palin, in 'Pole to Pole' wrote: "To this day the name Hansel is synonymous with Thief in some European countries". But bribe the man he did, and he escaped. Wasting no time, they headed straight for the mana cottage. Did he knock? Did he whistle? Did he leave a post-it note on the fridge? No! They Both started eating. Hammer and tongues. (They needed the hammer to break the gingerbread). Further evidence against Hansel is that he had a hammer with him (also probably stolen).

When poor Miss Minogue returned home, it's no wonder she was angry. She'd been cooking that house for over thirty years! It was her mother's pride and her joy. She straight away tried to call the police, but sadly phones had not yet been invented. Neither had the police. JK Rowling in 'Harry Potter VII: Evil never Dies' says "Harry was not happy with Hermione that Friday".

So the old dear resorted to the only means of self defense she knew: Baking. Locking Hansel and Gretel in the oven was the only way she knew to protect her heritage. It is diabolical that Hansel then managed to evilly turn the tables and bake the Minogue line off for good.

He and his sister escaped, but their evil has since led to all manner of atrocities! Bosnia, Britney Spears and Vernon Kaye can all be directly traced from Hansel's actions. Evil! It is clear that Hansel was Evil Evil. He was a vandal. The only victim was Mrs Minogue. And the annals of history. My opinion is right. EVIL I SAY!!!!
VANDAL!!!
VANDAL!!!

F**cking P**s F**K*r*s

Having a bad night. Just (literally) walked into a wall. And it was getting bad before that... I should get to the sleep now...

Bell Curve

Typical: only just now, minutes before heading off to work, do I remember a thing I was supposed to have done last night (warning: this is really not very exciting). I wanted to find a picture of a normal distribution for use in a presentation. Oh well, have to do it freehand. I'm sure it'll look great...

Empty head, thoughts dissolved

I was sure that there was something I wanted to write about today, and then as soon as I sit down in front of the computer, blam, empty head, no thoughts. And that was a couple of hours ago, and it still hasn't come back to me. Very annoying. It's not like it was likely to be anything particularly exciting or interesting, but darn.

I have a friend who is getting married in a few weeks time. Just been to buy some stuff from the wedding list, and typically all the good stuff seems to have been bought already. Mainly just plates and glasses left. And how expensive is the stuff!!? Sixty quid for a pair of wine glasses? I'd want some bloody good wine in them as well for that price. And worse... a pair of small wine glasses - also sixty quid. Doesn't that break some basic law of economics, smaller things are cheaper? I suspect it's all my own fault (as normal) for leaving it quite late - if I'd got their earlier I could maybe have got something more interesting... But I'd be scared to drink out of glasses that expensive. Maybe they're actually cheap and I just have no idea what glasses cost.... Used to be a pound each when I was at university.

For the record, I have got them:
2 x Wedgwood Signet Gold Plate 27cm
1 x Pair of Signature Wine Waterford
1 x Le Creuset Rnd Pie Dish 26cm Blue
I don't know what any of the things look like, but I guess I can trust they only put stuff on the list that they like. Don't worry if you're worried that I'm giving away a surprise here - they receive regular updates on who has bought what. And they don't read this anyway.

It's quite nice to have a night in for a change. Seem to have been out every night for the past ages (unless I'm just forgetting some empty ones). Shouldn't complain, and it's not like I'm dragged out kicking and screaming - "drink this pint of beer or we step on the hamster" kind of thing, (and I don't even have a hamster so that would be something of an empty threat), but it does get tiring. I can have a nice sleep instead. Maybe even an early night if I get bored of doing nothing much useful. Note to self. Must take washing out of tumble drier. It's been in there since Sunday.

I am alumni, I am

My old college has decided to hold an annual alumni event in the north of England. Presumably because those of living up here are too lazy to take the 2 hour journey to the south. The first event, at the end of next month is here in York at "Historic" York Minster. ie about 15 minutes walk from my flat.

The exciting line up includes: Evensong, a guided private tour of the Minster, a drinks reception and a hot buffet dinner. Now, I'm not particularly attracted to Evensong, and I've been round the Minster before, but I'm tempted by the food and drink, especially as they are free. The main problem is that I don't expect there to be anyone there that I know, and the average age will probably be close to twice mine. Never mind, it is after all free food and drink and if there's one student habit I've never really grown out of, it's go for the freebies.

So I think I'll go along. It's not like I'll have anything better to do. And I may see some old friends. Especially if I get my finger out and actually email them to persuade them to come along. I may even offer them my floor for the night - Helluva offer. Final thought: Don't take my cheque book along - they're bound to try and get some kind of donation from me...

Some Information About A Tunnel

About halfway between my flat and the town centre, there is a tunnel which passes below a railway line. It's quite a dark intimidating tunnel, and doesn't have many redeeming features at all apart from the fact that it is dry when it's raining. Except for the bits where the roof drips. It's approximately 100m long - just so that you can have an accurate picture in your mind.

Now with it being a tunnel which, by definition, has walls, it is prone to receiving graffiti. I certainly don't condone graffiti (indeed I can barely spell it) but within the last week some drawings have appeared which make the tunnel seem much more friendly. There are now, at irregular intervals, several doors drawn on the walls. Some also have windows next to them. One has a welcome mat. It now feels more like walking down a friendly suburban street (though with an element of Hobbiton - that might just be me) than a dark evil tunnel. Well done Mr Vandal. Now perhaps you could turn your talents to something more useful.

There is another option to get into town. If one takes the left side of the street rather than the right side, you instead reach the road tunnel which the cars go through. This is potentially a safer feeling route, as at least were you to be accosted by an evil mugger there would probably be cars driving past. They wouldn't stop, but at least there could be witnesses to your death. This route does however have one big drawback. The road tunnel has a huge pigeon infestation (as in many normal size pigeons rather than one large psychotic giant pigeon. I'll talk about her another day...). This means that you are at big risk of being splattered by pigeon s**t. And splattered by pigeon s**t is not how I like to turn up to work (or indeed to anywhere else). So I normally take the tunnel. The nice tunnel with the friendly doors.

On a totally different topic, today was February 29th (if you don't believe me check the date above the post). This means that any nice young lady could have proposed marriage (or maybe just a cuddle) to me today and I would have been legally obliged to accept. And not one did. Exactly the same thing happened 4 years ago (though I was with H then, and she might have got annoyed if I'd accepted marriage proposals). Oh well, back to plan A. (Unless the next half hour before midnight goes differently to how I expect).

Note to self: Please get a life

It seems that for once, I am tune with the British people. James Fox (who, like a sad muppet) I voted for, will be this year's UK Eurovision entrant. I'm almost excited - It's like I now have a personal stake in the competition, as I, yes, I me, chose the song. I also found I have a song by the future Euro Winner on my iPod. Utterly tragic. It's a cover of Aztec Camera's classic, Somewhere In My Heart.

Dreams vs Reality

It's strange how the things we dream about can sometimes differ markedly from what we consciously desire. Which one is to be trusted most? Answers on a postcard...

Note to self: Get a life

I'm currently watching one of the most important programmes that will be shown on British TV this year. Not really. It's "Making Your Mind Up", where the UK's entry for this year's Eurovision song contest will be chosen. It's a bit rubbish, but compelling, just like the actual contest itself. There are six songs to choose from, and the hope is that the winner will be at least better than last year's entrants who managed to score zero points on the night. This is a feat only previously achieved by Norway.

Of the ones I've seen so far, Song 2 seems best. Because it had a guitar. It was sung by James Fox, a guy who failed to win Fame Academy last year. Is that the sound of the bottom of a barrel being scraped I can hear? Other entrants include Haifa (who failed to win Pop Idol a few years back), and a chap who used to be in a boyband, whose name I forget, but I think it may have had an "x" in it. And some other people too of equally "high" quality.

[it is now a few minutes later] I've seen all the songs now. I think I'll vote for Mr Fox (though I'm sure I'd be better off ignoring the whole thing and not getting involved). If you would also like to vote for Mr Fox, just dial 09011 988 002. And: boom - 10p gone for ever.

I like sleep

Woke up with headache. Had a bowl of muesli, half a packet of chcolate chip cookies and a couple of alka-seltzer and went back to sleep.

In yesterday's post, I mentioned that I was not expecting much of the pubs on last night's pub crawl/treasure hunt/quiz. Expectations were fully met. There are good reasons why these places are quiet on a Friday night! Had a fun evening though - I got to write an essay with the title "Hansel and Gretel: Victims or Vandals?". That's probably the first time I have ever used the words "fun" and "essay" in the same sentence. I'd reprint it here, except that it was handwritten and I don't have it anymore.

For reference, here are the places we visited (or at least the ones I remember): The Corner Pin, The York Arm, The Hole in the Wall, The Cross Keys, The K Bar, Buzz, The Little John Inn, The Golden Fleece, The Northern Wall and The Three Tuns. Actually, they're not all bad. Just most of them.

What shall I do this evening... More beer! What a fine idea. It's a good job that I don't have anything important to do at weekends.

Harmonica Warning

It snowed again last night. So another slippy slidy day ahead. I can see a cat outside. He seems to be walking about fine. I wish I had the balance of a cat. Or maybe I just need claws or something.

If you are out in York this evening, you may be unlucky enough to hear the sound of a rusty harmonica (key of b flat) floating through the air. This will not be me, but it could well be near me. I apologise to everyone for this now. It's just that when someone said "Can I borrow a harmonica?", I forgot to say "No, I do not own such an instrument". Must learn that one...

We are doing a pub crawl this evening, notionally in fancy dress but with it being Friday night, quite busy, and we don't want to get beaten up, we are in very toned down fancy dress. So much so that you may not even realise it's there upon seeing us. The theme the organisers had originally chosen was Fairy Tales. However, this now seems to have migrated towards Dungeons & Dragons, so there will be various parties of adventurers getting a bit tipsy around what we're promised are "quiet pubs on Friday nights" (ie probably rubbish ones). If this is not the case, I'll correct it tomorrow. I am a Rogue. So I am dressed entirely (yes, entirely) in black. Sometimes I do that anyway. Sadly my thiefly plans for sneaking around in dark places could well be scuppered by the fact that everywhere is very White today.

The harmonica user is our bard. Don't see why he can't just use a lute like a normal bard.

Extreme Noise Terror

I've got hold of GarageBand for the Mac. This is a program which essentially transforms the computer into a complete recording studio, complete with a tonne of ready made loops and instruments should you not have any of your own. I do have some of my own - two guitars, an ocarina and my voice. So now I have the capability to record songs in my own living room/bedroom and inflict them on the world. I haven't had a chance to play around too much yet, but I did manage to lay down a kickin' version of The Drugs Don't Work. Well, maybe not that great really, but it was fun. And I managed to cunningly make it sound like I hadn't had to stop and turn the page halfway through.

Playing around with it has actually made me understand the recording process a bit more - like for example why they always wear those stupid headphones when recording vocals. I first laid down my guitar track (using the guitar) and then when I tried to add a vocal track, I found that the guitar sound gets picked up again as you sing. But: If you play the guitar back through the headphones, you get a much cleaner vocal recording. It also prevents feedback when you turn the monitor (note: not a computer monitor. Or a milk monitor) on. Possibly not a great late night hobby for me though, the neighbours may not enjoy the sound of me as much as I do.

[Incidentally, at school, we had monitors for everything. Milk monitors, computer monitors, door monitors, snogging monitors, minstrel monitors, the list goes on and on. Being a monitor gave you a break from standard school work. Wouldn't be great if we had monitors at work! Every lunchtime for example you could go and be a mail monitor and inspect all the post. Or you could stand by the front door and check everyone had their tie done up properly! Think of all the respect you'd get from your peers.... But I digress]

So now I have the ability to make mp3s of me! And take them anywhere I want on the iPod. This is the most egotistical thing since I worked out how to make the computer read my blog back to me in a daft computer voice (called Bruce). Now next time I have an idea for a song, I can actually bring the dream to fruition! A new target for myself... Christmas no 1: 2004?

Badly won tickets

Looks like I sadly didn't win tickets to see the free Badly Drawn Boy gig at Fibbers (See post of 27 Jan 2004). At least it avoids problems of who to give the other ticket to. Kind of a shame though as it would have been a good night.

There is a very cold wind out on the streets tonight. Very very cold. Now that I am inside, I'm glad I am no longer outside. In the cold wind. Because it was very cold and unpleasant. Did I mention it was cold? And windy? It was windy cold.

Subliminal Stick Use

I went out for Sushi last night (and actually had some raw fish (sashami?) but that is not for discussion today). It was a bit odd because for the whole evening, it felt like I had someone else's hands. Like most Eastern food, Sushi is eaten with chopsticks which normally I have huge problems with. Last night however, I had no problems at all. I could pick up battered prawns, bits of lettuce, fish, rice and wine. Actually, not wine, that would be stupid. The only explanation for my new found proficiency was that I've been dreaming about foreign food and have somehow sleep-learnt to use the sticks. This doesn't seem likely. I don't normally dream of food.

County Karma

It has snowed again in the night. Only a little so far. Doesn't look too slippy so I won't have to do too much complaining.
Apparently Lincolnshire has had a lot more. Good. Serves it right.

It's Sunday! Hello Sunday!

Last night I managed to advance one of my long term goals. Very slightly. I met a chap from York university, who is studying Physics and Astrophysics. He wants to join NASA. He may have been lying. I attempted to convince him of the need to take an actuary into space, on either the Moon or Mars missions. I am not sure that he was convinced, but the idea has now been planted. Mayhap he'll mention it to someone in the NASA administration, and remember that here in England is an actuary who is willing to go into space. The dream lives on...

Completely unrelatedly: It was interesting to see that 80s rock band, The Alarm, have managed to sneak their way back into the charts by releasing their new single under a pseudonym - The Poppyfields. They got an unkown young (Welsh?) band to mime on the video, and the song has had a load of airplay on the radio, airplay that one can only suspect would not have been given had the true artist been known. Don't think I've heard it myself. It does pose a worrying thought though. What if a lot of the great new bands around at the moment are actually 80s rockers in disguise? Could Keane really be Big Country? Are Franz Ferdinand actually The Police? Are Foreigner moonlighting in Stellastarr*? I think those three are safe as I've seen them live and didn't spot Sting anywhere (thank goodness), but we must all be alert!

Snoozy woozy day

I have done very little of note today. Lots of sleeping. Might do some more tomorrow as I have no major plans for the day.

The only thing I can think of that I will need to do is to fill in an application form to go on some new BBC gameshow. Can't see us getting through ("A team of actuaries... they'll be fun!") but it's worth a shot. Quite amusingly, the lady at the BBC who sent us the applications sent us four copies of the application form, one for each team member. If this had been in the post, it would have made perfect sense, and saved us a bit of photocopying. However, she had sent them by email, and attached the form four times. Some people are yet to catch up with the modern world.

Stop...

It was disappointing to hear the sad news today that Mark and Lard are leaving Radio 1 after 10 years. I've been listening to them for most of that time (not so much in the last couple of years though, what with having to be at work and no longer having study afternoons). But they will still be on the radio albeit not together. Bye lads! ...Carry on.

I've been away. But I came back.

I've just got back from a brief overnight visit to Norwich, where I was helping out with a graduate assessment centre. It's quite a long way from here... pretty much four hours each direction. Got to stay in a lovely hotel with free breakfast, lunch and dinner though, so can't complain too much.

I think it was the first time I had been back to East Anglia for probably around a year and a half. Didn't really get to see much though as the hotel was a few miles out of the town centre. From what I could tell though, it hadn't changed too much and it was still raining. Really hard. Hotel bar was good last night. As often seems to be the way, me and me homeboys were the last ones in it. Probably should have been in bed really given that I had to be all professional today. Luckily I shomehow managed to avoid a hangover.

Thinking about it slightly more, one thing had changed. There is now a flyover crossing the evil roundabout in Kings Lynn - it avoids the whole stinky thing. Shame they can't put one over Lincolnshire too.

Permission to rant

Rant Commences. I do like The Darkness, but in no way should they have won Best Album at The Brits last night. I know The Brits (like most awards ceremonies) are a bit daft, but there were many better albums released last year. So many that I can't be bothered to list any of them here. And as for Busted... End of (short) rant.

At least ten wasted minutes...

There is a shop that many of you will have heard of: It is called Marks & Spencer. I sometimes shop there for lunch. Today it annoyed me twofold:

1) Evil store reorganisation: All sandwiches and salads have moved to a different part of the store. I wasted part of my life searching for a salad. I do not need that.
2) Having purchased said tasty salad, they had run out of plastic forks. I had to use a plastic teaspoon instead. It was a noodle salad. I have enough problems with noodles at the best of times. Stupid slippy worm-like food. Eating them with a tiny plastic teaspoon is not my idea of fun. Perserverance is needed, and persevere I did. And probably took an extra five minutes compared to eating it with a fork. That is another five minutes of my life gone... I should sue.

So you may be thinking: "Wow! He's had an awful day. I hope it wasn't all bad and that maybe something nice happened to him too". You might well think that; I couldn't possibly comment.

Tropi-cool, Icy Icy

My mini desk move at work seems to have gone successfully over the weekend. I think I slightly preferred the old position - I had a better view of the Minster. I managed to get in early enough to claim my special big chair from the random desk it had migrated to, otherwise I would have sulked all day. We also now have our secretary sitting next to us rather than in a building half a mile away. That has to be a good thing.

There didn't seem to be any albums of note released today, which is always disappointing. Several good singles, though it was disappointing that The Fiery Furnaces new one was not amongst them. Tropi-cool, tropi-cool. Tropi-cool, Icy, icy. Genius. There were some new Belle & Sebastian songs (on the new B&S single oddly enough) so that made me happy. Not that I started the day feeling sad - as I said earlier, I had managed to retrieve my Big Chair. It has arms.

Watch out, the world's behind you

It's nice to actually wake up on a Sunday morning without a hangover. You can get up at a sensible time (ie before 10am) and do lots of things. Like going to Sainsburys. And reading some book. And finally working out how to upgrade the software in my iPod. The trick seems to be to reset the thing, whilst it is plugged into the Mac, and then run the updater. I think the Mac was getting a bit confused as the pod had originally been set up on a PC. Anyway it works now which means I have a better battery icon and a Music Quiz Game. No idea how that works, but I'll find out soon once all the music is copied back over.

Readers with good memories will recall how I mentioned that whilst playing Head Over Heels the other day, it coincidentally came on the radio. It happened again yesterday! This time it came on during Donnie Darko whilst I was playing HOH. It's very strange - I've been playing Chrono Trigger a lot recently and not once has a song with that title been played simultaneously. It's mighty strange. Maybe Pink was right - God is a DJ, and he likes old Speccy games (I think that last bit was in a verse that was cut from the recorded version).

I live close to the National Railway Museum - one of York's premier tourist attractions. Currently it is VERY busy as they have Thomas The Tank Engine (and friends) there. The kids seem to like this for some reason. For the rest of us, it's a very bad time to visit for two reasons: 1) it is very busy (I think I mentioned that already); 2) You have to pay to get in! Normally entry is free, but whilst Thomas is around all visitors must find Seven English Pounds and hand them over to the Nice Lady. That's on top of the slightly extortionate Five Pounds car-parking charge (which applies even when Thomas has gone away to wherever it is that scary blue trains go to). What with the Minster now charging for entry as well, York is a lot more expensive than it used to be.

If I was slightly more entrepreneurial, I might be tempted to go and stand by the road and rent out my own parking space here at the flat for a more reasonable four pounds. I could probably get a couple of different cars in each day, a nice little earner. Although I suspect that I could earn better money by doing my actual job. And then I get to sit in a nice warm office rather than stand out on the street touting for business. I don't do that anymore.

Oh my God, she killed Ken

It was saddening to read in the paper today that after many many years, Barbie and Ken have split up. Mattel claim that they just "drifted apart". Celebrity relationships are always under a lot of pressure, and so it is amazing that this one lasted as long as it did. I wish them both luck for the future.

One can only hope that this won't lead to a load of copycat breakups from other toys seeking a bit of publicity. If I read tomorrow that Mr Potato Head has split from Mrs Potato Head I'll be quite lacking in sympathy for them.

Who stole the weekend?

Cheers tonight guys. Now I have confusion.

Keep on movin' on anyway

I've got a desk move at work this weekend. Not a huge one, I'm moving approximately 1- 2m. Despite this, we still have to put all our possessions in crates, put stickers on all the IT equipment and generally get disrupted. We do potentially get to finish for the day at 4pm though, as long as I've finished what I need to finish today. Arguably I should be heading there now rather than writing this. That's a good idea. Bye!

The Lint Dynasty Grows...

I had some good news recently which I can now let loose on the world. I am going to be an uncle! My little (soon to be much bigger) sister is having a young baby. I'm not sure what its name will be yet, so for now I'll call it "The-yet-to-be-born-niece-or-nephew-of-mine", or Yet-To for short. Maybe the name will stick and become its permanent name.

Yet-To will be my first niece or nephew, mainly because I have only the one sister, and this will be her first. I do however have some experience of young babies through my ex's sister. I am therefore aware that it will be a while before the baby is able to do anything interesting like speak, fall over or mathematics. Mostly it will gurgle, cry and make a lot of mess. But (apart from certain people who were never young) we were all babies once, and the best we can do now is be nice to the little blighters and try not to drop them too often.

Once the babies get older they turn into Children which can be both much more fun and much more annoying. Here are the top 5 advantages of having children:

1. You get to buy lots of toys. I tend to do this anyway, but some people need an excuse.
2. You get to watch cartoons. Again, I do this anyway.
3. Christmas regains its lost magic. Possibly not in this over-commercialised day and age, but one can dream...
4. You have someone to do the washing up for you.
5. You finally get to find out what goes on at school parents evenings.

I expect there'll be more baby related postings here in the current months.

And finally some advice for bringing out the best in Yet-To courtesy of Radio 4's Sunday Format:
"Ideally you should have more than one child so that they can be played off against one another. Only one need become creative, so if the others develop psychotic tendencies, fine, they can be offloaded into the mental health system, and the fees for psychiatric treatment set off against tax."

Even Jesus never went this long

It has now been 43 nights since I last had a coffee. No ill effects have been noticed, I don't seem to feel any more/less tired than before, I'm not sleeping any better/worse than before, but I am using far less teaspoons. I haven't particularly missed the brown stuff. I've replaced it with a mixture of fruit tea, peppermint tea, green tea and the odd normal tea. And (New Improved) Lift. Much more flavour variety. I still kinda object to paying 65p at work for a cup of mint tea (ie some hot water and a teabag), but then I could always get a free standard one from the machine.

I bring this coffee up for a reason though: Last night I had a dream. I and some other friends have been staying round at a friend's house on a Saturday night, and she offers us coffee. Being half-asleep at the time I say "yes", at which point I am given a coffee, and I drink it down in one! Nightmare! I realise straight away what'd I've done and experience the dream equivalent of mild disappointment and slight irritation. I'd claim that I woke up screaming but that would not, I say not, be true.

When will my coffee drought end? Will it be an intentional decision, perhaps in Starbucks? Will it be a momentary confused lapse as was foretold in the prophecy (my dream)? Or, like "The Mysterious Cities Of Gold", will it never end? (*)

* I know it did end eventually, but it felt like it was never going to. Everything ends. Apart from infinite things. And Neighbours.

A change is as good as a desk

Sometimes people feel like a change. Perhaps a holiday, or maybe something more drastic like moving into a houseboat. I have had a change today. I moved my table. It used to have the PC on it, now it is a dining table. It's like having a whole new living room. Of course, this does now mean I'm lacking something to put the computer on. I need to buy a computer desk. I kinda figured that my actions this evening would make the need more acute and lead to quicker action than I might make otherwise.

So my next job is to find a computer desk. But where? I think I have a solution. I have spotted just that over the road from where I live there is an office shop. It currently has a big sign up outside saying "Computer Desks". This may be just the ticket. And I will get away without needing a car to carry it home. Perfect. It's nice to have Saturday planned this early in the week.

Another good way to have a change is: Clean the bathroom and make it all sparkly. There's nothing as satisfying as a shiny bathroom (apart from possibly some things that involve girls. And crisps are nice too). To anyone reading this I say: Go now! Clean your bathroom! Make it sparkle! You'll feel better afterwards. I bet many of you haven't cleaned a bathroom for months. Possibly you haven't cleaned it since you moved in to your flat or house. It needs cleaning - Look at the dirt - Urggh! All you need is a damp cloth, some cleaning products and a bit of willpower. And arms. I say again - You'll feel better afterwards. And you will have earned a beer for yourself.

This post was sponsored by Cif: The New Name For Jif.

No fixed topic - I flit from one to another like a summer mayfly

I knew it was going to be a bad chair before I sat on it. The angle of the seat was wrong, and it was clearly far too low. But I did not let this stop me. I wheeled it into the meeting, and sat on it. It wobbled a bit, but eventually settled to a semi comfy level position. Until after about half an hour when with a loud "bang", the seat tipped and nearly spilled me to the floor. I knew it was going to be a bad chair.

My post this morning contained a replacement Switch card. This is probably a good thing as the old one was starting to get a bit manky. But. It's a different shade of blue! How will I ever manage to recognise it? Every time I open wallet in a shop in an attempt to actually pay for goods, I'll be momentarily convinced that I've lost it. I'll panic! The shop assistants will think I'm a mad old trout! AARRGGGHHH. It is a dilemma.

I have another dilemma too, but I will maybe save that for another night. It boils down to "Should I?" or "Shouldn't I?".

And finally, in other news today: Last week Janet Jackson was performing at The Superbowl with an over-exposed tit. And then he uncovered her breast! Boom and indeed Boom. Yes, welcome back to World of Lint where the jokes are a week late.

Dog Faced Creatures

Any male as old as myself (and possibly some girlies too) will have probably had some kind of home computer when they were a kid - most likely a Spectrum or Commodore of some kind. There were always a few freaks with Amstrads, but they were a minority. I even knew one kid who had an MSX. Poor lamb. One of the best games on the Spectrum was "Head Over Heels". This featured a thing called "Head" (who could jump high and fire doughnuts) and a different looking thing called "Heels" (who could run fast and carry items).

Head and Heels start the game imprisoned somewhere in Space (I think). They soon manage to escape from prison. This isn't actually very hard as there is a teleporter in the corner of each of their cells. Eventually they then meet up and Head can stand on top of Heels (to form Head over Heels) and they can then set out to overthrow four or five evil empires and save the universe. All good clean rollicking fun.

(Nice coincidence - as I write this, a clip of the Tears for Fears song, Head over Heels, is playing on the radio)

Anyway, some nice nerdy guys with time on their hands have written versions of the game for Windows and Mac, and they are great fun. The game is still bleedin' hard, but it is (slightly) more generous with saving games than I remember the original version to be. Everytime you pick up a reincarnation fish you get an extra save game to use. I think all they did in the original was change where you start from when you die (but I can't really remember). So now that it is possible for me to play through the game in more than one sitting, maybe I'll eventually get to the end (15 years is a long time for unfinished business).

The game (and others) is completely free and is available from the retrospec website.

Some good news: I have obtained a crossover cable and my computers are now sufficiently networked for my purposes (though I did have a bit of help).

The joy of nets

I've spent several long frustrating hours this afternoon attempting to network two computers together. With no success - neither one will recognise the other one. I think I have now worked out what the problem is - wrong kind of cable. Apparently there is a special "crossover cable" that is needed if you are linking two computer's directly together without a hub. They should teach this sort of thing in computer classes at school.

Slightly more excitingly, I have now borrowed an electric guitar. This came with a cable I can actually use. I haven't had a chance to have a proper play yet (as I've been pissing around with networks), but I suspect moving from acoustic to electric is unlikely to turn me into a guitar god (Zeus Springsteen?). Shame.

Whoosh!

Whoosh another week has sped by, leaving me damp and dripping on the doorstep of Friday. A (currently empty) weekend ahead of me. Just a little day of work to do first...

Hazard warning!

How many people in the UK are killed or maimed each year by the wing mirrors of buses? It surely must be a considerable number... For any pedestrian walking on the side of the pavement nearest the road, there is always imminent danger of a bus coming from behind, driving too close to the kerb and hitting you **whack** in the back of yer head with its mirror. It's a potential deathtrap and I'd write to my MP if I had the faintest idea who they were.

I guess short people are safe.

Happy anniversary to me!

Fourth of February 2003 was not a particularly pleasant day last year. Today we reach a whole year on...

So where am I now? A year on. A year older. Slightly wiser. Not sure how I expected to feel today - it's kinda nice to have it here and find that it's just another day, pretty similar to yesterday, pretty similar to how I expect tomorrow to be. The past year has definitely had some good points, especially in the second half, but I still don't think I'm as happy in myself as I used to be. But I am optimistic about the future, sometimes probably too optimistic. Hope? Hope is good.

I won't claim I'm not (still) quite bitter about things, but there comes a point when you realise things you feel aren't just going to step-change disappear one day, however much you might want them to. Fading happens, but slowly. Some people however remain complete scum.

And to those many others of you for whom last year was a bad 'un, for whatever reason - stick with it. We'll be ok.

Zeroth isn't even a proper word

My previous post made reference to the second law of thermodynamics. I've had a couple of discussions in the pub with people about this recently, trying to think what the three laws are. I don't think we ever managed it, mainly because there are actually four laws. It's no wonder we could never agree on them. So here, for reference are the "three laws of thermodynamics", taken from Scienceworld:

Zeroth Law: If two systems are in thermal equilibrium with a third system, then they must be in thermal equilibrium with each other.

First Law: Energy is conserved

Second Law: it is impossible for a system operating in a cycle to produce positive heat flow from a colder body to a hotter body.

Third Law: As temperature goes to 0, the entropy S approaches a constant. Furthermore, it guarantees that the entropy of a pure, perfectly crystalline substance is 0 if the absolute temperature is 0.

I think it is the second of these that leads to entropy tending to increase over time.

So in summary: For energy E, temperature T, pressure P, and volume V, with entropy S dE - T.dS + P.dV <= 0 .

Hopefully this will be the end of that one...

Knowledge drips slowly from your dying skull

I'm sure that when I was younger I had a much better grasp of physics than I do now. This was probably caused by studying it a lot, both at school and through university. Though some of the university stuff was very hard and I'm not sure I actually really understood it all even then. Although I think I must have been ok since I got a decent degree at the end of it all - it can't be that easy to bulls**t in a maths exam can it?

Normally, understanding physics is not something I need to do on a day to day basis. I understand the basics: Letting go of a pint glass will cause it to fall to the floor and smash (Law of gravity); Once smashed, the glass is highly unlikely to spontaneously reassemble (Second law of thermodynamics); However, if in the process you splashed a big hard man with beer, he will push you and you'll fall to the ground (Newton's first law). Ask me to explain anything really complicated though, such as "How do tides work?", "How does a gyroscope work?" or "Where have all the nice girls gone?” and I am at a loss.

So it was slightly frustrating to be looking at a website earlier and being unable to properly grasp what it was on about, or how what it was saying differed from the standard models. The central (non-standard) conjecture on the website is:

“The gravitational mass of an object varies, depending on the proximity of other matter, in order to keep its total gravitational potential energy equal to its rest mass.”

I think that this means that G, the gravitational constant decreases as matter becomes denser, or as objects move closer together. The author of the website also makes various claims about this explaining many things, but I’m sure that much of the background I need was not available to me. Or possibly I should just have read the site more slowly and attempted to understand things line by line like I had to do at university. If anyone is feeling clever (unlikely given my readership) could you do me a 50 word précis of the theory?

So overall I have no real idea whether any of it is sensible. He does suggest an experiment I could do to verify the conjecture, but since it involves owning at least two orbital satellites, it is kind of out of my budget. I could manage something involving flour, water and a jam jar. Mind, I never much liked doing experiments in physics. All that ticker tape quite tired me out.

River's up... And a historical diversion

The river is still high today, albeit a long way from it's record in 2000. It doesn't really cause me any problems apart from having to go a slightly longer route to get my lunchtime sandwich. Which today was Piri-Piri chicken. Not really sure what that actually is - it seemed to have chillis in it.

I was thinking about the months of the year today whilst working on a spreadsheet. A lot of what follows will be old news to many of you so feel free to skip ahead to the end. I spotted that the final four months of the year (September to December) are all clearly named after the numbers seven to ten (in Latin). Then I thought "Hmmm, that's odd, why stop at 10?". Did there used to be only 10 months? Were old months longer? Was the old year shorter? I knew that various Caesar typers had renamed a few of them, but that doesn't really explain why there were only 10. Well, I have done some research and here are my findings...

The Roman calendar only used to have ten named months: Artius, Aprilis, Maius, Junius, Quintilis, Sextilis, September, October, November, and December. The last four are probably familiar to you. There were two unnamed months too, which occured around about now, after Christmas. Except that I don't think they had Christmas then. And even if they did, I suspect it would have been at a different time of the year since didn't the church move it to coincide with an old pagan festival? Anyway, I digress. The unnamed months were during the cold bit.

Then the fun started. The second King of Rome, Numa Pompilious came along and decided that it was a little confusing not being able to refer to a whole sixth of the year by name. “Hey Numa – whenus is yer birthdayus?”. “Um, it’s on the eighth of…darn. Hang on, I am king! I can do what I want. I can name months! I hereforthwithus call them: Anuarius and Februarius. They are great names”. And so Our modern 12 month calendar was semi-born.

King Pompilious also added one other innovation – a thirteenth month called Intercalaris – this month was after Februarius and only happened every so often – it was the predecessor to our Leap Day in February. I’m not sure this would be so popular now – a whole month of having to avoid girls so that they can’t try and marry you! Or possibly a whole month hanging round them so that they will…

This state of affairs then continued for roughly six and a half hundred years. In 46BC, Mr Julius Caesar came along, reformed the whole thing, and named Julius after himself. Later, Augustus Caesar got in on the act and claimed the month formerly known as Sextilis as his own. And they fiddled with some days, got rid of Intercalaris and added the leap day as we know it now.

And since then, things have remained fairly constant. Unless lunatics like this guy get their way…

That is the end of today’s educational content. Hope it was useful for you.

24: Series 3 is great!

Worry not, there will be no spoilers in this post. I am now up to episode 11 of the third series of 24. It's great! I think critics have been a bit negative about it, but (so far) I think this is better than the last season. Episode 11 features a brilliant parallell with The Brittas Empire - you'll understand if you see it. It does not feature Colin's plasters.

Whilst on the subject of old telly, earlier today I correctly answered a question on the occupation of Des Clark from Neighbours. I need cyanide....

Snick Sliding Away

York is something of a strange little city. Its various streets are linked by little alleys, locally know as snickleways. Many of these are quite narrow and dark, especially at night. So. What is a really great way to spend a Sunday evening? I know: Let's go on a three and a half mile walk around York city centre, using as many snickleways as possible! Excellent idea. Some were shut due to flooding. River's up by the way.

All in all, there were supposed to be 50 snickleways. I think we did most of those. And a couple of inns. It was so dark that a certain person who will remain namless did a very comedic "walking into a bollard" thing. Ow! I think it's fair to say that I've now visited some parts of York that I a) never knew existed; b) never want to visit again.

Later, I won four pounds on a quiz machine.