This is the first pinkwookie post to be brought to you live from Manchester…well the server that is, not myself.  Onto January 2008 finally.  Before the usual moaning that people mention of how far back in the past I am writing about, here’s a pic of how much trying and giving up this post has endured from myself.

Tries

Yes, that’s right.  This post has been over 7 months in the making.

Back where my last post left off, I mentioned that there was indeed a light at the end of the Peckham, which indeed did result in me moving out of the aforementioned South East London town.  After a couple of meet-ups with Geffy, and a decision on a suitable digs we decided on a place in Bow in East London.  Even after enduring the joys of moving just over a month before, I was doing it all over again.  Now that I think of it, I have moved house every year of my life since 2002.  Yes that’s moving house every year, for 8 years straight.  You could argue that it makes me incredibly good at it I guess.

I believe it was the weekend that I moved in that my Director informed me that my testing  services were needed in Birmingham on the Monday.  I was to work with two of the guys, whose homes were in Ireland, that I met during the induction for the job.  Initially I was supposed to be there for two weeks, but it ended up being about 6 months.  Looking back retrospectively, apart from Friday evenings, from moving into our flat in London in February, the first time I saw it during a weekday was in July.

Anyway back to Brum, as the guys who were already there,  had been there a while, they had managed to book a 2 bedroom apartment there.  Luckily however, they were on hand to suggest a decent hotel nearby to where we would work and also suggested the ones to steer clear of.  I must confess really looking forward to some of the perks of being in Birmingham, mainly the £25 per day that I would have to spend on food, I was living the dream there!

After arriving in Brum rather late and having minor difficulties with finding the hotel, I  went to visit the guys’ apartment which was a pretty cool pad.  As I’m sure you’re wondering, me visiting a new place wouldn’t be complete without a strange event from happening, such as being mugged, or losing my wallet and Birmingham was no exception. You know the little location  interludes you get in films? I mean where the location is new and it shows a preview of the locale like sandy beaches, people buying fruit from the local market, etc. etc. and then the name comes up at the bottom.  Well, for me and Birmingham, it would be utterly dark at night time and the camera would hover over a bunch of chavs kicking a guy in the street within an inch of his life…[cue text]

Birmingham, February 2008

On my third day in Brum after work, we all decided to go to the cinema to see Cloverfield.  A most excellent plan, which was only hampered by the then freezing cold.  On the way we noticed a poor chap lying on the floor in the middle of the street with a few people kicking at him.  Possibly because of my optimism about people, I thought it was just people goofing around until I saw the copious amounts of red fluid that is normally supposed to be under your skin.   It was quite a harrowing experience because the guy was out cold.

The events that followed as most witnesses will say happened very quickly.  I rang up an ambulance for the poor bloke, whilst Jonathan and Sean tried to fend off the other attackers who left rather promptly.  Probably my first time ringing up emergency services (and hopefully my final), I was in a bit of disbelief that my and everyone else’s experiences to call centres replicated themselves here; after asking for an ambulance, I was actually passed through to the wrong person-unbelievable!  Although the woman could help me, she said “Umm I don’t know how you got through to this number” Which isn’t exactly what you want to hear when you’re next to a person that needs urgent medical attention.  Still, she was probably some supervisor that wasn’t supposed to be operational and helped me by passing me through to the correct person who promptly helped me.  As you can imagine, my directions for the ambulance weren’t exactly specific, what with there being no roadsigns nearby and it being only my third day there.  I told them a name of a theatre which we were next to which seemed to be enough and I was later told that they were verifying the incident on the CCTV camera above us.  Since fighting was flaring up again which my friends were trying to dissipate, I requested the assistance of the old bill too.

Whilst trying to keep the guy warm and talking to him (even though he wasn’t talking back as he was still out) one of the girls that was already there when we got there (possibly co-operating with the kicking) said that it was her brother and then went into his wallet and took money out…that’s a new low in my opinion.  Jonathan acted swiftly by taking it off her and putting it back, to which he received a punch in return.  Unbelievably another guy came out of nowhere and took the whole bloomin’ wallet and rushed off (he was caught nearby by police).  So anyway, after what seemed like ages, the police turned up and detained the girl in their car.  She was obviously up to no good, what after trying to nick money, claiming that the guy was her brother, then her father and later on her cousin something didn’t quite add up.

By the time the ambulance got here, the guy was just coming to and after the paramedics checked him out, he actually managed to climb into the stretcher himself which was a bit of a relief because I thought it may be more serious.  It turns out that he had some kind of fit after the stress and injuries of being attacked which is why he was unconscious.  We all had to wait for ages in the freezing cold so we could each give a statement to the police too.  Jonathan also had to go the police station to make a formal statement, rather him than me because I was busy trying to help the guy whilst speaking to the ambulance people whilst not paying much attention to what was happening around me.  Our night, perhaps chivalrous was pretty much ruined; by that time we had missed Cloverfield by miles and went back to the guys apartment to wait for Jonathan who took ages in making the statement.

Looking back on it us 3 guys took on rather Battlefield-esque  roles.  I took on the role of Medic, Jonathan was assault and Sean was support.  Granted I’m not sure where sniper or demolitions would fit into this picture but I digress with my dubiously accurate analogies.  Anyway we decided to see the Cloverfield the next day rushing through the freezing cold ignoring everyone.  Yes, I think that film is good.

We do have a section now on how it all turned out.  Jonathan, as he was marked down as a witness was contacted by Birmingham police about a month after and was told that the victim did not want to press charges (probably because he knew the attackers).  We were all suitably enraged about this all, partly because of the horrible things that happened to him, but also because a lot of our efforts to help the guy were sort of in vain if he didn’t do anything about it.  Still there was nothing we could do about that.

I’ve realised that I usually only update this blog now when Wordpress wants an update, so that I’ll upgrade and then continue on a draft that I started about a month ago and then finally post it.  I’m also including pictures in this one after a few requests.  It’ll go some way to prove that at least some of my random musings really happened and perhaps it’ll go a bit of a way to drown out the boring writing.  OK probably not.

You could be confused into thinking it was in fact August September as I fall further into not keeping up to date, but anyway, cast ye minds back to December 2007 and I shall continue. -cue wavy flashback-

After spending the first few months at my new job and living with my dad, both of which were a new experience for me I was trying to find a flat in London.  I went to a few viewings, some of them which were worryingly small, one notable example was where the bedroom, lounge and kitchen in one room, the sofa being the bed.  The thought occurred to me that it may not be so nice to go to bed and still being able to smell my lovely stir fry which I’d cooked right next to me a few hours earlier.

Upon settling on a flat in Forest Hill, I put a holding deposit on it, waiting to move in during December.  However, after being in an interim period where my tax threshold on my wages were worked out, Alistair Darling thought that I get too much money and that I should therefore give a vast quantity of my wages to him as opposed to keeping it.  Therefore with regret I had to concede that I could not budget very well on the wages that I would actually get and cancel the deposit on the flat.  After that, it became somewhat of a panic to find somewhere else rushing as my Dad informed me that I could not live in his when he whilst he was away on holiday.  I unfortunately did not get a good range of viewings; they were almost all in South East London and whilst I didn’t know the city at all, I did at least want to see flats in different areas.

Therefore I had to settle with one of the first places I saw due to time constraints.  It was a one bedroom flat in Peckham Rye in a semi detached house.  My flat was on the first floor, above a couple downstairs and needed…work.  You know, the usual, mould in the kitchen and cracked floorboards everywhere (which later resulted in unavoidable crumbs dropping between them which I assume was making the makers of the scuttling noise very fat) There was also a criminal way of operating the shower; having no mount, the shower head had to be held whilst holding the trigger to let the water out.  The bulb in the bathroom was so powerful it had melted itself to the bulb holder, rendering it irremovable, but had the side effect of giving off a lovely toxic plastic smell whilst on.  The fire exit was a joke too, being a sort of enlarged cat flap to a metallic platform on the outside.  No ladder, just a 15 foot drop down.  How could we forget the fantastic microwave, complete with large crack in the front which is a bit of a health hazard so I left that one be.

I moved in during the winter month of December, with some appreciated help from my father who helped in the essentials that this mind could not comprehend, such as setting up curtain rails, extending power cables long enough to reach computers.  Also the provision of a TV and suitable furniture was most welcome, especially as I did not have broadband (a concept that I had been familiar with the past 3 months at my dad’s house and a month at mum’s, although I made do with the company laptop avec 3g card).

The electricity, gas and water companies that the estate agent suggested on their were of course the most expensive, so the aforementioned 3g card was worth it when checking out price comparison sites for utility companies and getting the best deal.  However, my first night there was greeted by an argument of epic proportions.  The couple downstairs were not wasting any time screaming and I was torn between trying to get to sleep and ringing the police.  After considering that my idea of an argument that is bordering on murder may be different to others, I let it be.  I later realised that this was indeed a regular occurrence for them, regular and violent to the point that stuff was breaking and this was kicking off almost always without fail at ungodly hours.  I actually met up with them and they invited me in as they had a computer problem and as it turns out they were pretty nice people, nothing like the disembodied voices had suggested (the man in particular).  They had cheese, crackers and Wallace and Gromit on TV-a very appropriate foodstuff to be enjoying considering the entertainment.  

Other things I learned were that my landlord (who I hadn’t met as I went through an estate agent) was almost certainly a raving psychopath…and certainly a criminal and this guy had the keys to my door.  There was a certain story involving him, a hammer, and the couple’s broken door.  Other cheerful tales of this delightful landlord included the classic “Girl that used to live in my flat had a broken water pipe, refused to pay the rent until it was fixed. Landlord changed the lock, forcing the girl to sleep in her car for a few nights, after which her cat died of hunger. How he is still a landlord is beyond me, you can probably guess, I just wanted to give this guy a big hug…

Arguing wasn’t the neighbour’s favourite past time oh no.  They also loved to play music rather loudly with the bass turned right up.  Go on, guess what genre of music…I bet you’re wrong. Yep it was Disney Theme Tunes.  I could think of much worse music to be listening to at loud, or indeed any volume but that’s not the point.  The point is, it’s a bit strange as they didn’t have any children and I now know the lyrics to “Magic Carpet Ride”, “Circle of Life” and so on off by heart.  OK, so for some of them I probably did anyway.  There was also an instance when I was awoken at 2am by a knocking at the front door.  It turned out to be the woman downstairs who was locked outside of the main house and had been out there for hour, trying to get her boyfriend to let her in, who was obviously ignoring her.  As it was winter and she didn’t have a coat I thought this was pretty bad and so offered my humble flat, but she thought she’d try her luck with the inside door of her and her boyfriends flat, cue more arguing as she was let in.  I don’t know how I made it into work for 9am every day during December, but people clearly noticed that I was tired.   

On top of all the bad points of this place, a mere 2 days after I moved in, a Mr. Garside asked me if I was still looking for places and if I would want to look for a place together.  Doubting that the estate agents and especially the crazy hammer-wielding landlord  would appreciate me breaking a 12 month contract after 1 month, I agreed to meet up with the Geoffster in the new year to discuss a possible light at the end of the Peckham.  

Normally the way that my Christmases work are that I spend Christmas and Boxing Day at my mum’s and then travel to my dad’s to see him and repeat the process over again.  This time as I was so close to my dad’s, I thought I’d do it the other way round.  It did however have the rather lonely side effect of being on my own for the first time ever on Christmas Eve, spending it in my flat (or whatever other descriptive that can be inserted to replace ‘flat’).  Anyway as per usual the entertainment and food were of top quality on Christmas Day and I proceeded to wish that this food didn’t make you put on weight and slowly forgetting as the day went on.  I then returned, slightly fatter to my humble abode.  This pattern continued on Boxing Day and then after that, I left for Kettering to repeat it at my mum’s house.  

New Years Eve was a particular low point, which consisted of playing the most excellent Tomb Raider Anniversary, pausing it at 11:45 to watch the TV until after midnight, and then resuming play.  Even my dad in his nearby house was out celebrating with his wife and some of her family, but nonetheless I tend to think this day is an excuse to drink large quantities of alcohol, not that many people need that excuse.

OK so only 9 months behind present day, I can relax now.

Before I start this, I know my theme keeps changing. It seems that the kick ass themes that I choose are almost always guaranteed to throw a wobbly as soon as a new version of the fantastic Wordpress is released. Also following feedback from my review group (well I think it was Matt H and Andrew) it has been a bit confusing about which time frame I am referring to in my posts. So to clarify this it following off where the last post ended (yes we’re still roughly in September 2007, where I went into work on Monday in London as opposed to Birmingham.

Ok so I did slightly miss out of the last post the fact that I did go out after work on the Friday for drinks. It was a weird and surreal experience for me, having a small birthday celebration in London which I wasn’t used to at all. By no means am I a country bumpkin with webbed feet or anything, but for someone that isn’t really used to living in the city, it was strange being in the middle of a bunch of tall buildings and a lot of people and thinking to myself “I now live here”. I sort of purposefully don’t tell people about birthdays because I don’t like a big deal made anyway.

On Monday I met up with the 2 guys who I would be working with for the next few weeks and we walked to our new home from 9-6 weekdays, which happened to be in Monument, just north of London Bridge. As I was still quite wide eyed and new to the city (I still am really) having been only there for a week, I spent a lot of the time getting used to thinking in the morning, on the train and tube, how lucky sardines are being dead and packed in a steel can. It was also novel for me to look out over the Thames as I walked across London Bridge every morning and evening, which as I looked around me, I was the only one doing it as the robotic suits were staring forward determinedly hurrying to work. I was quite pleased at being slightly compensated by the incredibly high living costs in comparison to what I was used to by the free stuff that I was getting. Free papers, free tissues, soup, curry sauce, coffee, tea etc. they all came in handy at some point.

Work was work and in the months to come I saw a bit more of London, even though I am now living here I still manage to feel like a tourist. I was slightly puzzled at why there was a different camera in similar positions on London Bridge filming people walking to work. I think there may well be more than enough stock footage of sped up people walking across bridges for news reports or whatever, but I could be wrong. I managed to see a few things that I’d not seen before such as Piccadilly Circus and Leicester Square. I even watched 3:10 to Yuma in the Premiere Odeon place although the £15 or so for a single ticket only went a very short way to compensate me that my bum cheeks could be occupying the same seat that has been graced with the likes of Tom Hanks or John Travolta. The film itself was rather good, albeit absolutely no different to seeing it at any other cinema. Actually I’ll rephrase that, it was no different to seeing it at any other cinema apart from the Futurist.

In the months to come I was also able to increase my exposure to London a bit more. The irony of being shown round London by Jonathan from Cork, Ireland was not lost on me. We went to the Natural History Museum and the Science Museum which are now free. I guess a lot of things may change in the space of about 18 years which is the last time I visited these. We spent most of the time in the History variant and didn’t have much time for the Science one which did seem a lot more interesting in my opinion but we have since revisited it to give it a fair chance.

After word got out about my enthusiasm for Lord of the Rings with my work colleagues (or perhaps come to think of it, it was the random Rings quotes in normal conversation…) me and a couple of the inductees went to see the Lord of the Rings musical down Drury Lane. It was great being able to feed my obsession a bit more; the sets and costumes were fantastic and I’m still trying to work out how they made Frodo disappear in front of my eyes (and no, I’m pretty sure it wasn’t a trapdoor).

Other than the above, I don’t have much to say about the months September-November 2007 or rather I’m betting there is loads but I can’t remember. Oh yes that does mean that you can hear the faint jingle of bells, see the green of holly and hear “Holidays are coming, holidays are coming…” for the next post.

I’m doing something slightly different for this post; for those readers who are violin players, get yours ready on my cue. Following on from the last post, I moved to London into my Dad’s house for the first week of work. The first week consisted mostly of sitting around doing very little, until I, and a 3 others from the induction were told that our first project would be in Fleet helping a client test all their systems from a move from XP to Vista. I wasn’t entirely impressed after asking several times that projects that I would be assigned to we be exclusively in London and the answer was ‘Yes’. I have got used to people saying ‘yes’ when in fact what they mean is ‘no’ (which is quite hard to tell, yes? No?), I think this was a case of the answer being different before and after being accepted for the job.

I spent Wednesday, Thursday and Friday shadowing a project in Aldgate, for a major bank who were rolling out a new mortgage checking website. However, on Friday after luinchtime, I was surprised to receive an e-mail from my line manager about a project in Birmingham and that I had to join a conference call in half an hour about it. I rang him up and explained that this was not ideal since Birmingham is in the West Midlands and I had gone to a bit of trouble 6 days earlier to move out of the East Midlands and into London. It didn’t cut it and I was in no position to argue the point really and besides I didn’t really mind, so after I joined this call I was informed that my hotel was being booked and everything. I used this point to ask for a laptop because Internet access was likely to be blocked where I was based at, and I may need to reply to consultancy e-mails, fill in timesheets and the like and I managed to go back to head office and pick one up the same day.

The day after, Saturday, happened to be the titular birthday when I did…pretty much bugger all. It was my first proper weekend living in London and celebrated by going into Croydon with Dad, bought some socks and underwear just because I’m rock and roll and it was my birthday. I even had to pay my dad board, which may have been a little ill-timed of him to ask for, and received no gifts from anyone in return and without being too materialistic, I din’t really expect to be ending my birthday worse off than I was before. -Ok go ahead with those violins- Before you get too sentimental, a few days later I received a Amazon voucher from Tom, which I bought ‘The Movies’ for the PC and ‘Brain Training’ for my DS. I was also lucky to receive a letter from Mr. Foster with some expertly painted artwork on the cover, containing the new Harry Potter audiobook. Ok and granted my friend also bought me tickets to go paintballing (which we only used 2 weeks ago). All of which I am of course very lucky to have received.

Other than that, I really did nothing, other than have a Chinese, watch films and generally veg out. I also received a call from my manager to say that I, in fact was not due in Birmingham on Monday after all and could turn up in head office. Therefore the timeline went something like this: Tuesday – Going to Woking on Monday, Wednesday – Going to Woking on Monday, Thursday – Going to Woking on Monday, Friday – Going to Birmingham on Monday(frantically join a conference call about this within 30 mins), Saturday – Stay in London on Monday. Such is life and the best made plans I guess.

I’ll leave you with this musing that I thought about whilst watching a great series that I’ve recently watched called ‘From the Earth to the Moon’ which followed NASA’s adventures during the space race. In 1969 when NASA put the first man on the moon with the aid of computers probably less powerful than my mp3 player, NASA in Houston were in regular contact with Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong, whilst they were on the moon. So why the hell in the year 2008 does my mobile phone lose reception every time I jump on the tube?!

It’s still a case of blogging when I have time and can be bothered and so I offer another museum piece that is a previous event in my life.  I’m pretty honoured that I have been asked by several people where the latest installment of my ramblings are.  Some of you may notice the new look to the site, the new version of Wordpress broke the skin and I had to get a new one so I hope it’s not like using a cheesegrater on your eyes.

Having quit my old technical support role, I somehow managed to impress an interviewer enough for them to offer me a job. After accepting their…acceptance I was kindly booked 3 weeks in sunny South Africa for work training. I’m not overly sure why they do the training there, they do have a big office building there and dedicated training rooms, whereas their London office doesn’t and frankly I wasn’t to argue with their reasoning. If somebody had said to me when I was lying in hospital, that I’d be in South Africa in little over a month’s time, I would’ve thought you would be utterly off your rocker.

It started with meeting the trainees in the office in Woking. This was hard enough for me to find, armed with a Google Map printout and my belongings for the next 3 weeks, so I was slightly concerned about navigating a foreign country, even if it was English speaking.  It was weird as it was my first time outside of Europe and whilst in South Africa, I didn’t find it strange to be referred to as ‘from the UK’ what I did find unusual was to be referred to as ‘European’.

It started off with the usual stuff that I was dreading, ye olde introductions. Having got past the formalities, introductions and a slap up meal, we were carted off to the airport. Experiencing the paranoia of today’s world first hand after we were scrutinized by men, machine and dogs, passport was a ‘yes-yes’ bottled water was a ‘no-no’ and there seemed to be an onus on inspecting shoes. Although they did find a tiny village of conscious people in my shoes, no chemicals or explosive devices were present or found so I was good to go. The flight was OK, despite myself being a bit apprehensive about it and I got to watch Spider-man 3 which I thought was pretty good, despite people telling me otherwise.

We changed plane in Johannesburg after a mad rush round a frankly insane airport that’s shaped like a horseshoe, except the directions tell you that the quickest way to go to your terminal, are both the long and the short way. Needless to say, we ambled our way unknowingly the long way.

We were placed in different hotels dotted around Durban and I was quite enjoying our place with frankly a lovely lady, who may have talked a bit much, but was a quoting legend almost as much as Detective John Kimble himself. The first day ended and we were shown to a lovely local restaurant called Nourish and after taking a tip off my brother to try the steak in South Africa, I wasn’t about to disagree with this. It was the stuff of dreams, the ambrosia of steaks, melt in your mouth heaven…should probably shut up about food before I turn into Jason Biggs.

We spent a vast amount of our time in the office training, which I guess is fair enough, but it was pretty intense, I mean straight after we got off our plane and went to the training centre we were instantly in for lectures and work. I remember that first night pretty well, we were all exhausted and only a few days later, we had an exam – compulsory to pass, so the stakes were pretty high.

The first weekend we were there we went to a fairly local bar in the town and on Sunday, it was a trip to the beach in Durban. It was a pretty cool day; nice and hot and we saw in a local sea life centre, lots of cool fish and some South African penguins (which I didn’t know existed) though I think they were not the gay variety, for those of you that know what I mean by that. We also got to see something which I wanted to see since I was little; a dolphin show, which I enjoyed thoroughly even if the dolphins probably weren’t the happiest, what with being in captivity and all.

The weekend after, we set off groggy in the morning to an authentic Zulu village within ‘The Valley of a Thousand Hills’. We were treated to some tribal dancing, where I thought they were going to poke my eyes out with their sticks, but they were only actors anyway.  We then went to what was called a safari park, but had a disappointing handful of different animals such as zebra, wildebeest, antelope and that’s about it.  The park also had a bunch of crocodiles in it which were interesting to see, especially at feeding time.  We were told that the oldest croc there and also the largest was a bit grumpy then; his wife had just bitten of one of his toes and they weren’t speaking to each other.  There was quite impressive array of snakes as well, including the Black Mamba of Kill Bill 2 fame.

Another day we went to action cricket, a sort of cut down version of normal cricket in an indoor arena.  After a long and not too awaited return for me to sports, I proved why me and sports don’t go together, although I didn’t do too badly at bowling.  Though in saying that, there’s no real way of saying if it was me that’s good at bowling, or the person batting that is rubbish.

The weekend after, we actually were still in the office on Saturday and yes I know I can’t complain as I was getting paid to be there.  On Sunday, we did ‘Canopy Tours’ which consists of you going down sort of death slides, but without a seat, and you’re strapped in a harness.  Some of them were pretty fast and some of them quite slow, but you could sometimes enjoy the scenery as you were zooming past.   The knack of knowing when to stop on my first go failed me and I realised the hard way of how difficult it is to pull your own body-weight up an incline with your arms, when you’re a heff.

The final night came before we knew it and after the final exam, all there was to do was to celebrate in a lovely restaurant in Durban, which we were told we were lucky to have as it was a bit costly and over the normal allowance for events.    It was absolutely lovely, we got free tribal markings of facepaint, a serenade from a band and some great food.   Let’s be frank even though I don’t smoke, any restaurant that has a cigar menu has to be good.

The flight back went as well as can be expected when airlines go wrong and bums (which aren’t yours) are in your seats and you have to get on another flight.   Durban airport was still as confusing and they even had a room to check in guns, can you believe that?!   I saw Blood Diamond on the way back, which turns out is pretty good.

When I got back to London and travelled back to Kettering, I was utterly exhausted again.   I went to sleep and woke up a record breaking circa 24 hours later (yes, 24 hours asleep!) when mum played an evil trick on me, saying it was Sunday and I had to move to London.   The day after, Sunday, I had notime to recover from the trip and I packed all my belongings into a car and moved into London to my dad’s house, ready for my first day of work in London on the Monday.

Pictures from South Africa are available for those of you familiar with a website called ‘Facebook’.   I’m sure that if you’re reading this, then you’ve probably already seen them.   Also signed up for a Flickr account for those of you that are interested, but I haven’t had the patience to upload any photos from SA yet.

So, we’re only in July on here and I’ll eventually catch up to present day. That’s when it’ll get exciting as I’ll start predicting future based events to make up for lost time
After I lost the use of an internal organ and came out of hospital, which was a cinematic moment akin to Andy Dufrene escaping from Shawshank, I had a few weeks off work, whilst I realised I didn’t really want to go off. Life was good, my friends lent me all the Star Wars films, an Xbox and I had a shiny new DS courtesy of Tom. Eating happened to be a painful affair, although this gradually became slightly more bearable. I went back to work for 4 weeks as and then left, as planned.

The days after I left were pretty hectic, although safe in the knowledge that work had let me be cheeky enough to take my week’s holiday, despite being on leave after hospital. I left on the Monday, Tuesday I was in London where I stayed at my dad’s for a few days, I had an interview on Wednesday, Thursday I travelled back to Watford and Friday I travelled to see Luke for the weekend.

The weekend couldn’t be anything but epic; I mean, c’mon the new and final Harry Potter book was to be released and there was the promise of a game of Warhammer (which I say I hate, but secretly enjoy). I had the utter pleasure of travelling from Watford to Hull via London and through King’s Cross and as a result, I stumbled by chance on an utterly fantastic sight – platform 9 and 3/4 complete with trolley vanishing into it.

It was my second time in Hull and I was there for just over half an hour and managed to be a bystander in a robbery and was almost mugged, I wasn’t too impressed. Here’s how it happened; I arrived in Hull and as it was raining, I thought I’d go to the local Games Workshop, you know, just to keep dry and not to look at models. Besides, it was only whilst I waited for Luke to finish work and pick me up. There was a young man of the visually unsavoury sort who was lurking behind me and asking me lots of questions about models. The shop shut shortly after and I decided to part with some cash in exchange for a model and leave. Imagine my delight when the shady character sidled up beside me wanting cash in the exchange for mystery goods, which turned out to be a model he had just nicked from the table in the shop. Being the moralistic person I am, I tried to shrug him off, but navigating the streets of Hull when you’ve never been there before, on a Friday evening at around 6pm when it’s utterly dead, as it turns out it isn’t that easy. The guy didn’t understand the meaning on ‘no’ and threatened to put me in an ambulance until the dictionary in his limited brain flicked to the ‘n’ words and managed to decipher the meaning of no. He stormed off, smashed the model, to which I promptly returned to the shop (with no reward, may I add, though I can’t imagine there are much marketing value for a smashed landspeeder, well painted or no). The shopkeeper knew the guy as a bad sort and had even seen the guy nick the model.

Luke was then on hand and turned up and whisked me away to the magical land of Driffield (capital of the world) where you can drink water straight out of the tap and it’s as good as filter water.

Amusingly Luke’s entire family was reading the new Harry Potter book by the rest of the day and Luke and we had to largely creep around the house with hand over our ears for risks of leaked spoilers. That day we played Warhammer, I forget who won, but I suspect it wasn’t me and I also had the luxury of seeing Byrd and Rose mansion (though you need a couple of days to see it all!). It seems that they’d done a lot with the place since they bought it and it looked like a very impressive pad. I was especially impressed with the Sky remote that turned on the lights in the bedroom. I was even half tempted to do a finger clicking celebration that I blatantly nicked off Chris. They had cats too, so I can’t complain. Just goes to show that you can still live a good life without your gall bladder, eh Alice?

We then went to a delightful restaurant, where I ate stuff that I shouldn’t have at the time and would have regretted the pain if the food hadn’t tasted so good. It was good seeing everyone and in a way, it’s a shame that I passed the interview for this job because after Luke, Alice and Chris suggested a cunning idea to find a job in Yorkshire.

Sunday consisted of Luke generously ending my torment of avoiding spoilers and buying me the Deathly Hallows, and me reminding my friend that she was supposed to be coming to visit me in Watford the following day to take my belongings back to Kettering (which I knew she’d forgotten). We also went to see The Order of the Phoenix, which turned out to be really good, even if Tonks didn’t have the accent in the films suggested by Stephen Fry in the audiobooks.

The yule-tide season finally reaches pinkwookie, so dust off your Christmas trees, grab a cracker and have some good old vintage 2006 mulled wine on me.

Christmas was a very normal and routine affair as it has been for me the past few years. This year was probably worse, as I was in that awful period after having graduated, having the time of my life at uni, to a life of unemployment, few local friends and possibly worst of all, no Internet.

I fully meant to do something other than stay in my room on New Years Eve this year, but my immune system decided to play a horrible joke on me and after having an early night, I woke up around midnight and was pretty ill. Bringing in 2007 by being sick wasn’t the best celebration and made me think of what the other 364 days had in store for me.

As a year, 2006 certainly had its moments, we graduated, Oblivion came out and ruined my life and we all learned the importance of Pentapeptides.

It took way till February until I could class myself in the enviable group of employed. I moved into Watford, started a job and festered for a while. Neither the area or the job was for me, despite being told I was quite good at the job. Basically what it entailed by broadband technical support was receiving a call from a disgruntled customer whose Internet wasn’t working and it was a race to either find out why they couldn’t get online and offer a solution, or providing a walkthrough to fix it over the phone. I mean, it wasn’t enough that we got normal customers with a normal problem, we only got the angry ones; when you ring up technical support for our company, you get through to a helpful person in India. When said customer exhausts all possibilities and gets thoroughly annoyed with said Indian, complains that they want to talk to somebody English, that’s when they get through to us. I did find it an amusing irony that a large portion of my colleagues were Asian, or Indian anyway, they spent the first 5 minutes of a phonecall describing the English weather and what time it was in England. To the credit of the general public, the vast proportion of calls that I took, broadband wasn’t working through no fault of their own, i.e. bad signal, not yet activated, the accounts department decided to mess up randomly and deactivate their account and broadband. From February till June I worked there and as you can guess I have some amusing war stories of customers which I’ll share.

I’ll protect the name of the company that I worked for, a few of you know it, but I can say they were Brazenly Terrible, Brilliantly Trashy and Broadband Trouble.

Well there were the usual hard of hearing, elderly, partially blind (and worst of all, a combination of all 3) and believe me getting them to put the cursor in the address bar was harder than finding the lost city of Atlantis, let alone typing in the address for our remote support tool so that I could do everything for them. You do wonder in circumstances like that, what the heck they’d do with the Internet if it was working…

There was also a guy, during my first week there, he was disabled, housebound and relied on the Internet as a lifeline to order food from the local supermarket. What you say to someone in that situation when he has no Internet is beyond me, and although whether his story is valid, when a person is telling you a story like this, you have no choice but to believe it.

There was the suicidal woman, who was crying over the phone as she had lost the Internet, and was saying things like “If you don’t ring back, I don’t know what I’ll do to myself…” Until the situation turned round, when I got her someone out to fix the problem and she was a completely different person, apologising for her behaviour, saying that I have a calming voice and asking if I’d ever thought about a career in teaching, as I’d be the perfect candidate for the children she taught.

Then there were the nice people, like an elderly gentleman from Scarborough, who I was reminiscing all the places there, him inviting me in for a Whisky, next time I’m in town. The uber-hot sounding welsh women, where I almost considered delaying offering the solution so I could stay on the phone. The hot sounding young female doctors and the praise I got back from some customers who rang us back, got through to someone else, but they just rang to say my name and say thank you. Although the constant threat was there that your call was silently being monitored by a superviser, I generally got through the day without sawing off any limbs, scored top associate the first month I worked there, and got high empathy scores when supervisors were listening to me. I know I’m blowing my own trumpet here, but haven’t we all at some point? Besides, anyone that I talked to during that dark era knew I was pretty unhappy and my heart wasn’t in it, and the old gall bladder thing was the last straw of being in a remote area where I knew little to noone in my spare time and doing a job that I wasn’t overjoyed doing. I did meet some cool people whilst working there and am sorry to have left them, but it’s been for the best.

In other news, recently my numb right thigh has finally beneffitted me, I accidentally bashed it on the corner of the table and it took me a few moment to think…’wow, that really should’ve hurt, oh well’

Ok, so you all probably knew this was coming: the whole story of what has happened to me in the past few weeks in the futile belief that people care.

I’d been having severe stomach pains for months, been to the doctors about 6 times, who insisted that I had irritable bowel syndrome and that it was brought on from stress of the new job, new area, meeting new people etc. I thought that was a laugh, I ‘m normally about as stressed as Matt would be if someone handed him a beer. But anyway I went along with it as the symptoms seemed to fit. That was until one night the dreadful pains were severe and didn’t go away, so off to the hospital I trundled. I thought I’d get some strong painkillers and be on my way, but after several hours of questions, tests, being a general lab rat, they put me in a ward.

After a couple of days I got what most guys don’t ever get to do – be a pregnant woman. Great fun, jelly on my belly, (which is probably nowhere near as tasty as the popular jelly beans) and I got to see my ‘baby’ gall bladder. Before I could think of any names for it, the doctor pointed out the layers of stones and the inflammation and said it’d probably have to go.

I’ve just realised how boring this post is…perhaps my blog mojo was stored in my gall bladder or perhaps that it’s because I’ve broken my chronological madness on here. I had a good draft of Christmas and New Year before this hospital one has ruined proceedings! Well anyway I had all of a day to worry about a couple of sweaty guys cutting into me to have a look but the op was put back a day because a couple of elderly women also needed the op and took priority. Worrying more and regretting watching those many episodes of Scrubs at uni, (damn you Geffy!) the time finally came. The way they put me to sleep was nothing like the movies, though the surgeon pleasantly asked me to think of something nice to dream about. No Harold Bishop on a Quality Street addiction helpine this time. There was also counting backwards malarky, just a stealthy injection as they had probably heard the rumours about how dreadful I am with needles, cold in my arm, pins and needles and waking up with a gas mask on over an hour later, wondering if they’d begun yet.

The worst part of it was after I’d woken up properly and been told that it was a success and everything, then they go and tell me that I have to change my eating habits and everything. I really started to worry then, because I have a sad life, I don’t have a girlfriend and eating is one of my few enjoyments I get out of life! One nurse even implied that I may never be able to eat a burger, enjoy a fish and chips or have a bbq ever again. I almost had a heart attack at this news! Wonder why they dont tell you all of this before…

Everything was a bit of a blur I guess, I felt that most of the time I was part man, part machine…there were wires everywhere, and I guess I’ll stop before I get too crude. A big thanks to everyone who successfully or unsuccessfully visited/contacted me, even if I did look like a bearded loon because I didn’t have the foresight to bring any toiletries with me. One of the notable visitees, a certain over-generous person which further emphasise my quote of saying how good it’d be to be his girlfriend

You may well wonder if the lack of a gall bladder implicates future heffing adventures, at the moment, yes it does. I’m forced to eat dreadful healthy food that I would think twice about feeding to a rabbit and I’m looking forward to training my stomach to be able to beat Tom in a future heffing competition. Weight loss is a nice side effect, but I’d rather be doing it on my own terms and be able to eat what I want.

Since being at home in Kettering and going to the doctors I have found that there are the 5 F’s that defines the majority of people that get their gall bladder removed:

• Fat
• Female
• Fourty
• Fertile
• Flatulent

Whilst I can probably cross off Fat…in fact I’ll do that as I barely ever use strikethroughs:

• Fat
• Female
• Fourty
• Fertile
• Flatulent

But numerous doctors have kindly told me that I was incredibly unlucky as I don’t fit the profile to have gall stones at all, which has me feeling a lot more annoyed!

Whilst being in hospital I was thinking about life in Watford and how I’m not really enjoying either work or the fact that I’m very isolated and have now decided to pack it all in and do something new as life isn’t worth living for me here. I’m not sure people will be too happy after I go into work on Monday after having so much time off and presenting them with a gift of a 4 week notice, but hey.

To end with I’m going to be melodromatic. If you’ll all join me in a moments silence to celebrate the life of my gall bladder and all the lovely heffing it aided me in.

James’ Gall bladder 1983-2007

A special hello to Alice who I understand also lacks a gall bladder and I hope will not deny all of this and say that having your gall bladder removed is a pleasant experience!

Oh! Another thing, will anyone join me in starting a national strikethrough day?! Put one on your blogs somewhere, I barely every see them at all! What about this: Strikey, bold and italic

First of all, I’m well aware that the title doesn’t seem to reflect what’s happening in my present life and I did say I’d be on to the present with this post, well I didn’t count on someone making a topic request on a post. I feel like some kind of busker asking the audience what tracks that they like playing…

Anyway Mr. Protagonis and I were having a discussion about the good old days of uni after I briefly blogged about them in the last post. Anyway, basically I’m going to list a load of cool stuff that I remember from uni and some from the discussion, that not all of you that know me, may understand. So, sorry if you fall into that category. Feel free to add to the list with comments.

In no particular order:

• Hot chocolate and a bacon & brie ciabatta and Café Baroque (we owe a lot to that place, or is it the other way around? Soon to be called the Meetingplace of Heroes when we’re all famous)
• Dinner at the Cask
• Chris’s finger clicking celebrations (which have rubbed off on me, I do it all the time and I think I saw Matt doing it a few times)
• Pig rolls!
• BF2 and BFV avec beer
• Matt and his tendency to want to go to the pub all the time
• Luke and I painting in the living room
• Strange, dwarf like person at Space, Myth and Magic and his amusing way of saying “Black Templars”
• Various cinema outings in York
• Poor service in The Futurist
• The grumpy finance woman at uni and her blatant moustache
• Fish Friday
• Geffy with his laptop surgically attached to his lap
• Matt with his PDA surgically attached to his ear
• Venus fly trap plants (whatever happened with them?)
• ASK
• Simon Hartley and his oh so worrying stories about the taste of certain bodily fluids
• Queen concert
• JFK Reloaded
• Tanko watching our every move in the living room
• Mr. Hartley asleep in the living room with his ass in the air
• The now infamous night of Simon’s birthday
• Lord of the Rings marathon day
• Matt’s monkey noises and the singing of “Just one cornetto…” waking me up
• Jabba the Hut at university and his tendency to inadvertently wear his shirt like a teenage girl with a bare middrift
• “Forking the child process” -Weihong, 2006
• The Great Heffing Competition ‘05 between Tom and I (2 pizzas, 2 people, limited time. He only won because I kept needing a drink as it was hot )
• Annoying seagull noises
• A picture of Harold Bishop surrounded by Quality Street sweets, after a strange dream I had

So in the last post in my chronological madness, I forgot to mention that I graduated in July of 2006. It was good seeing the old CIC crew and the girlfriends and relatives. It was great seeing everyone again. Oddly enough since finishing uni I’ve become more friendly with some people by talking to them online, that I barely talked to at uni err…hello Zach! The fabulous artist, Kneeley of pinkwookie fame (which I still haven’t made a main site for and put up the artwork, which is naughty of me) was also present as well as Mr. Hirons of first year ps2 gaming fame!

Looking back at my life then it seems so much happier then. I don’t want to fall in the trap of saying those were the happiest days of my life, because if that’s true then it’s all downhill from now on! Anyway suffice to say I had an truly awesome time at uni and met some utterly cool people and I hope I can make my lottery dream of buying a place and paying all the former Harcourtians to live there! In fact I’m going to amend that plan and make it some kind of spaceship, in the hope of recreating some Firefly/Serenity scenes.

I’ll save the in depth details of graduation as most of my readers were there, but it was good to see the old Harcourtians, as well as other friends and come to think of it, the absolutely horrendous thought is that, that was in fact the last time I’ve seen them. I know this has been largely my fault as offers to go various places have been made, but due to issues such as money and transportation I haven’t been able to make it and had to settle with being stuck in that accursed house. Anyway this will have to be rectified soon. But of course graduation is not relevant to now, so the rest is going to be about my birthday in September 2006 (which a few of you were there too!). Cheer up, we’re only 6 months behind present day!

Despite as usual I tried my best to hide the fact that I was going to become a year older, the secret was out and my birthday was proof that the best plans are made at the last minute, thanks to everyone that came. Well thanks to everyone that couldn’t too as they all had believable explanations. Anyway there were gifts galore and we all went to see The Wicker Man, which I thought was ok, and had a definite refreshing ending. Well re-ending as I’ve since found out from my Dad that it was a remake.

Anyhoo I should be onto the present with the next post.