Pete Ashton's Weblog

Touch wood, but I think we may have crossed a line. Today I made it to Sainsbury's to buy food. And then I made it back.

Still coughing intermittently and snotty but my head is clearer. I think I've got "just a cold" now, which is something I can deal with.

My vocal chords are shot to fuck and the muscles under my ribs are still bruised but at least I can think now.

If this progresses overnight I may well start dealing with the absurd backlog of email and rss feeds, of which there are a lot. Eek.

On the side of the bottle of Benylin I've been chugging from since Tuesday it says "consult your doctor if symptoms persist." And I'm wondering how long "persist" is in symptomatic terms, those being a hacking chesty cough, nose streaming red goo, a sore dizzy head and a complete lack of energy let alone being able to concentrate on anything.

(Actually, the one thing I can do is play Mario Kart, which is kinda odd. It must be using some buried primal part of my brain...)

So I'm thinking maybe I'd better go see the doctor on Monday, just in case, but then Andy informs me he had it for a fortnight. And Alex says she's still got the headaches. What I've got is normal.

See you on the other side...

If you should find yourself faced with a free buffet of food at, say, for the sake of argument, a local council sponsored event, please remember the most important rule of all.

Do not, no matter how tempted you are, no matter how much the devil on your shoulder eggs you on, ever, ever eat the prawn sandwiches.

Trust me. Your arse will not thank you.

The good news is it passed fairly quickly and all is well now but it could so easily have been avoided had I just followed the rule.

I've always had a pretty on-off relationship with Christmas. Sometimes it's great, and sometimes it sucks. Naturally this has a lot to do with my personal frame of mind at the time since life, as they say, is what you make of it. Suffice to say thing year Christmas really fucking sucked big hairy balls. Which isn't to say Christmas itself was bad. I actually had a good 25th all told thanks to friends taking me in and I wouldn't want them to think for one minute they were to so with my general ennui - far from it.

In short, dear reader, after a few months of on and off growling the Black Dog decided to return at some point in mid December with a vengeance. Which, as you can imagine, was really rather annoying since everything was going so well up to then. But that's the nature of the beast - always turning up when you least want him.

(A cautionary note. Starting a course of anti-depressants, specifically the sort that will send your moods swinging all over the place for a fortnight as you brain adjusts to the sudden influx of selective seretonin re-uptake inhibiting chemicals, a week before Christmas while everyone else is all "yay Christmas!" is possibly not the wisest of moves.)

But anyway, I don't want to go on about this. Alongside everything else it's a little known fact that depression is really fucking boring. It's the most tedious, irritating illness I've ever come across and once the cat is out of the bag it's a bitch to put it away again. There it goes, dominating the conversation and colouring perceptions, more mine than anyone else's, and I do find it's a self-perpetuating thing. Above all I really don't want to be depressed. I don't like myself when I'm depressed. I take no comfort from being depressed. After, what is it now, going on 20 years of having this bastard thing jutting into my life at inopportune moments I'm heartily sick of it. I just want to get on and do the things that I do without the black cloud, this heavy weight, that's stopping me.

Which, in a rather dramatic and roundabout way, is why I haven't been posting much recently. Or taking any photos come to that.

Still, at least December is over. Clean slate and all that. And a plan, of sorts, to finally get Created in Birmingham back on track. January shall be a doing month.

Finally, to all those, including family, who I really should have told about this over the last fortnight - yes, I know. I know. Consider this the telling and we can move on from here, okay? And thanks.

Okay, you'll have noticed I've been a little quiet these last couple of weeks, especially after all that noise about running a blog for Birmingham. Well, a spanner was thrown into the works of all that, but it was a really nice spanner. Possibly the nicest spanner I've seen for a while as a matter of fact.

As of today, and for the next three months, I'm a professional blogger. Which even this age when every company that matters has people on staff dedicated to blogging still seems a really weird statement, like being a professional tea drinker. So what does Pete being a professional blogger actually mean?

In short it means I'm getting paid a decent amount of money, enough to support my frugal lifestyle anyway, to write a weblog full time.

The title of the blog is Created in Birmingham and its remit is to survey all the creative activity in the city in blog form, from artists to writers to film makers to designers to musicians... all of them and the organisations and agencies that support them.

Which is why I've been kinda quiet of late as I try to figure out exactly what the hell that involves. I think I've got a handle on it though. Best to read the about page to find out more.

The main thing I want to do, though, is to make sure it's an actual weblog and not just a bunch of articles and interviews dumped online. It's quite different to the sort of blogging I've been doing here - I'm talking to people and relating their ideas in my own voice, something I never do on peteashton.com, and the tone is a little more formal - but I'm keen for it to have a narrative and a personality that runs through it as it develops.

In the meanwhile I will, of course, keep running this blog and I'm very keen to keep the Brum Blog going with the aim of eventually spinning it off onto it's own site in the new year. However, while I get CiB off the ground I'm going to be a little distracted, so bear with me.

So, yeah. Professional blogger!

Howabout that?

Okay, in short I'm still really tired all the time and something really needs to be done about it. I went to the doctor today (which, being Bournville, was a slightly odd experience in some very non-specific ways) and will be having a blood test on Wednesday. While I'm not worried about having a needle stuck into me and a small but significant amount of blood being removed I know that I will turn a shade of pale green, feel faint and have to lie down for a few minutes because that's what always happens to me in these situations, which, in the context of having a blood test to see if it might explain why I'm feeling so weak and tired and dizzy and stuff sounds like it might be a huge clanging clue. But then everything seems like a huge clanging clue at the moment.

It'd be so much easier if my arm had fallen off. Then I could say to the doctor "my arm has fallen off - please sort that out" and he'd go "hmm, I know how to deal with fallen off arms" and would deal with it.

I have a suspicion there's nothing wrong with my blood. I have a suspicion it's something psychological. Because I'm overdue for some more of that shit.

In the meantime I've been off work and watching a lot of Battlestar Galactica. Actually all of Battlestar Galactica, something I was intending on spreading out over the next couple of weeks before the next season starts (Oct 6th - warm up your bittorrent machines!) but when you're not only physically but mentally tired there's little more you can do. Or at least that's my excuse. The fact the BSG stands up as very good sci-fi doesn't help matters.

But I'm going a little stir crazy with all this inaction, so I'm back to work on Monday. We'll see how that goes.

Ostensibly there's nothing really wrong with me. I don't think I'm dying or anything so if you're susceptible to worrying about me please don't. I'm just annoyingly tired.

It occurs to me this is the first time I've used this blog to write something like this for an age. It feels weird.

Nothing serious. Just be aware you may not get much out of me for the next few days.

Some gigs and things I'm going to in the near future.

This Thursday is Jeffrey Lewis at the Jug of Ale, Moseley. The last time I saw him his guitar was about to explode and the History Of Communism had reached the Russian Revolution. Support is from The New York Howl and Will Tattersdill, aka Faceometer, who, as it happens, was supporting Lewis when I saw him in May 05 and I'd been wanting to catch him again ever since.

Next weekend, being September 2nd / 3rd, is the Moseley Folk Festival which sounds terribly tweedy but should, I think, be rather awesome. Most of the acts I don't know (not historically being a folk fan) but those I've recently seen (The Destroyers, Circulus) have impressed no end. Tickets are pricey (£38.50 for the weekend) but what the hell.

Way in the distance on November 9th is The Flaming Lips at the NIA. Tickets are £23.00 and are available here but watch out for the 37.5% booking fee, the buggers. Still, it'll be well worth it.

It's also my intention to check out A Slice Of The Pie, an intriguing gig/club/event thing held at the Rainbow pub in Digbeth on the first Sunday of each month. Here be some photos.

In photography land the Birmingham Flickrmeets group has started stretching its wings with a couple of impromptu meets. On Saturday we're doing a night shoot with tripods around the Brindley Place canals and then next Friday afternoon we'll be shooting the Midlands leg of the Tour of Britain cycle race as it ends in Birmingham.

The big one, however, is Artsfest, a weekend of free arts events in central Birmingham on September 8th-10th where the Flickrmeet group have been invited by the organisers to documents the event with press passes and everything. Which is, of course, fucking cool. The photos will be in this group after the event.

And that's about it for now.

Routine, it seems, is an important thing. For the last couple of months I had a routine. Get up at 7.30, go to work, come back around 1.30, do stuff, eat, do some other stuff, bed by midnight. A lot of the stuff involved taking and processing my photographs (Oh, you think?) and judging by the batch of 130 prints that came through yesterday it was a very productive time.

But that job ended on Friday and with it ended my routine. Monday and Tuesday were at chez Higgins digging soil from nine to six. I haven't done any real digging for over a year and the full day was a bit, a teeny bit but still a bit, of a shock, but the biggest fuck to my system was the sudden absence of time as my "evening" shrunk from nine hours to four-ish.

Hence no blogging, no new photos, no nothing other than food and the odd bit of football. And sleep. The sort of glorious sleep you get after a day spent digging.

Happy to say, though, that other than some slightly sore thigh muscles my body coped wonderfully with the digging. I guess two months of window cleaning and sweeping kept me in trim.

Actually, I lie about the no new photos. Gareth kindly developed the black and white film I shot during and after the Flickrmeet and they went up today. I guess 14 out of 38 (yes, 38. Not sure how I managed that) is a pretty good hit ratio but I'm not completely comfortable with them. Bit dark, though that might be down to Gareth's developing. Not that I'm complaining or nuffink, don't get me wrong. The whole film thing is all about moving away from the perfection of digital so the shittier the better really. Be interesting to see how the slide films come out though. (Once I get a around to shooting something with them...)

But anyway, I'm back in the routine of not having a routine and so far I'm not too keen on it. Today was a day off (the beds need to settle before seeding) and I got less done than I would were those hours spread over three days.

It's a strange one. I'm enjoying working for Nat and I like that I could end up in interesting places doing interesting things due to my flexi-status but it's not terribly conducive to the pursuance of my Thing.

When members of the household mentioned that the element in the kettle was going rusty and needed replacing I had a look and declared it okay. I've seen worse and it wasn't flaking, at least not too much. But the water tastes bad, they said, and given their taste-buds haven't been bludgeoned into submission by years of tannin and nicotine abuse who was I to argue. Just make sure it's not one of those stupid round metal ones with the handle over the lid. Those fuckers are bad news.

And lo, a new kettle arrived in the kitchen, which has put a minor kink in my tea making routine. This, I realised, was the true source of my mild resistance. There's the sound - a quiet rumbling like a spaceship cruising overhead. Given that this starts a minute or so after I've switched it on it's rather disconcerting. Then there's the way it sits on the base (cordless was my other insistence) in a very slight but still significantly different way to the old kettle. Neither of these things are problems and I'll adjust to them in time, so much so that if this new kettle were to be replaced in time by the same model as the old one I'd distrust that also, but right now it's all tad discombobulating.

On the plus side, it fills up easily with the lid on and has a really large viewing window. So it's not all bad.

I just went to the bank to pay in a cheque. The cheque was made out to "Pete Ashton" who, as you'll be aware, is me. The nice lady pointed out that the account was in the name of "Peter Ashton", who is also me, and that this was a problem, though not by all accounts a critical one as she was letting it slide this time. In future, she said, I'd need to get all my cheques payable to Peter-with-an-R.

But hang on, I said. I've been using the name "Pete" since about 1995 and it's never been a problem. This information obviously didn't compute and produced an evasive diversionary response as I can't remember her answer, so I asked if I could officially change my account to the name of Pete-without-an-R. Yes, if I brought in ID showing an official name change, such as a passport. But my official name is Peter and, since I'm generally able to be identified by both of the commonly used derivations of my name, I've never really seen the need to chose one over the other. Doesn't Pete = Peter? What else could it mean?

More to the point, if I were to come across a cheque payable to some other Peter Ashton that wouldn't be a problem, but a cheque intended for me using my commonly used moniker is not allowed?

One solution she offered was have a stamp which I could give to people who write me cheques, rather like shops used to do in the dark ages. This, of course, would be really effective since most of the cheques I receive come through the mail.

Whatever, since this hasn't been a problem for eleven years and since she was able to let it slide "this once" it obviously wasn't a big deal, so I smiled the smile of acquiescence and left.

Back in the old BugPowder distro days, before the internet and the rise of PayPal, I used to sell comics by mail order. People would send me cheques for sums ranging from £1.50 to £150+ all of which were made out to "Pete Ashton". I'd usually bank about 10 or so a week into the same account I was using today and never once had a problem. Suddenly this is an issue.

It's kinda odd. I can understand if I was using a pseudonym but isn't Pete a logical and universally understood derivation of Peter? If I go to the deed poll people and ask them to change my name from Peter to Pete won't they just laugh (and charge me a lot of money)?

I'm sure I just got a jobsworth on a post-holiday power-trip but even so...

I've had reactions possibly boarding on the surprising to the news that I might be getting a permanent job, or at any rate have taken the step of applying for one, thus going against the rules of my employment-related life for the last three years. Whilst I don't want to talk about the job for the same reasons most people don't blog about jobs they actually want to keep, I suppose I can say it's a caretaker position doing odd jobs around the place, so it's no different to a lot of the work I've been doing through the agency, and re-emphasise that it's only four hours a day (though with the higher perm payrate it'll be the equivalent of six through the agency) so it's not like I'm giving up one whatever it is I've been doing and selling my soul to The Man. In fact I see this as helping me to do all that stuff. By getting up at the same time every day I'll have more of a structure of my life (I've already surprised a couple of people by being asleep before midnight) and still have 2pm onwards for my many projects. And it has those cushty benefits like holiday pay and the like which are such a novelty to me these days.

I've been doing the job since last Monday (if I get it permanently that'll start in May sometime) and it has involved a bit of an adjustment. Essentially I now have a very large "evening" and I may have overestimated the potential that affords me. While I am only working four hours it's a fairly intensive four hours coupled with a significant bike ride involving hills (6 miles round trip) and yet in my mind I have this massive expanse of time in which I must get things done resulting in me doing essentially 12 hour days and being surprised that I'm knackered at the end of them. A balance will be found and I think it'll be a good one. Already my weekends are for doing things rather than recovering since the recovery happens on Friday.

One idea that might have to be reconsidered is doing other cash-in-hand (yes, I do declare them) jobs during the week. I popped over to Jez and Nat's new house yesterday to help them shift an inordinate number of bricks which the movers had refused to touch and while it was an okay job on it's own, coming after my normal morning (not to mention cycling from Northfield to Moseley) I was fucking knackered afterwards. That leaflet delivery job I did last year (posts here, here, here and here) is coming up again and I'm having to seriously think about whether or not I can do it. Even spread over two weeks it'll still involve 4+ hours of walking a day and that sort of walking has a tendency to hurt (remember a good walking speed is 4mph). I could bring someone else in on the job but they won't be allowed to fuck up of Nat will never speak to me again. We'll see.

Actually, it was interesting seeing Nat's reaction to the news of my potential job. Everyone else has been fairly positive about it but the look on her face was one of sheer horror. Their new house is lovely (and very, very large) but needs a fair amount of work, a significant proportion of which had been earmarked as "Pete can do that." Suddenly I'm slightly less able to, and that's not a good thing. One forgets the intrinsic value of being someone who is invariably available for odd jobs.

• Steve Wright is a twat. This is not news and I've known it for years, but by god, having had to listen to his inane glorification of the stupid for two days it bears repeating.
• Went to see the CBSO on Thursday. Went in blind and it turned out to be Mahler's Symphony No.2 (Resurrection) which was, well, quite stunning. I particularly taken with the indulgence of the piece, employing a full choir who only sung at the climax. Give that the acoustics in Symphony Hall are spot-on throughout the venue and their cheap seats are only a fiver I must make the effort to go more often. That said, it would be nice to be able to stand. It seems unfair that the only person who's able to dance is the conductor. (Dad's review)
• The office block in which I've been working has, unsurprisingly, reaffirmed my belief that such places are just not good. They had a "dress down Friday" (the irony being I'd made a special effort to wear clothes that weren't really scraggy) combined with a St Patrick's theme. The sight of middle aged women in large green foam hats combining the seriousness of their job with the desire to be wacky is just depressing. Also I noted the number of posters about the place for charity fundraising, none of which were directly connected with poverty. Given that the majority of the building deal with debt collection (resulting from other departments in the company pushing loans onto people who really shouldn't have loans) this was not too surprising, like they're trying to balance out the karma without dealing with the root cause.
• This last fortnight I've been feeling like I'm drowning in half-baked ideas and projects, but I made a list of them and it's not actually that bad. Maybe I'll actually get them done now.
• Oddly, or maybe not, I'm been contemplating putting myself forward for medical trials, the logic being as follows: 1) The noise made over the recent TGN1412 thing implies these things don't go wrong very often. 2) At the same time a significant number of people will be put off applying so they'll be looking for guineapigs. 3) I've been known to spend a couple of weeks feeling grotty and not getting anything done so I might as well get paid for it. 4) A couple of grand would free me up for a month or so of book writing. 5) Blog fodder! (Oh, altruism and for the good of mankind and all that too...)
• It's too fucking cold and I'm sick of it. This better break into Spring soon.

I was gifted a chicken the other day. A dead one, wrapped in plastic, so it didn't go against the "no pets" rule for renting the flat. Since I probably wasn't going to eat a whole chicken in one go I roasted it, stripped all the meat off (to be used in other meals over the week) and was left with a plateful of bones and skin. I then stuck these in a pot, added an onion and a carrot along with load of pepper and a bay leaf and gently boiled it for four hours.

Making stock is an oddly satisfying experience, partly because of the sense that you're making use of the parts most would throw away ("I am like the American Indian, using every part of the buffalo") but also for the smell which gets everywhere. I can still smell it now and it's making me hungry.

It's also quite a primal thing. As I was getting things ready to boil Dr Zoop came home and I started to explain what I was up to, only he's a strict vegetarian in the sense that eating animals is not only something he doesn't do but something he doesn't really comprehend (I think - I'm probably misrepresenting him here but you get the idea). It occurred to me that I'd just roasted a small bird, torn the flesh of its bones with my bare hands and was about to boil the remains, which is somewhat different from unwrapping an Oxo cube. I thought it was pretty cool. He thought it mildly gross.

I now have an excessive supply of chicken stock. Those ice-cube bags I recently acquired (as a potential air-con system for the summer - don't ask) are going to come in handy.

I've just completed the annual ritual of deferring my student loan. Back in 1995-1997 I "borrowed" a significant sum of money for University which, incurring interest at a rate close to inflation, is currently about five grand or so (I can't find the statement right now). And I'm never going to pay this back.

This isn't some kind of free-education protest. The moral issues, such as this money would have been a straight grant were I to have got to Uni immediately after school instead of waiting a few years, are kinda irrelevant as the loan is only payable should I earn more than £2011 a month before tax (this is a proportion of the national average wage - about 2/3 I think). Since I have never had, and probably never will have, a job that pays £24,132 a year, the direct debit I set up in 1995 is never going to kick in. Which is why I don't really consider it a debt.

So every year I collect my last three months of payslips, work out the average gross per month (£432 this year), stuff them into the too-small envelope and wait for the inevitable confirmation. It would be nice if they looked through my history and came to the conclusion that it'd be easier just to write this loan off than keep processing my forms, or at least put me on a permanent deferral until I inform them otherwise (as I'd be legally obliged to do should my earnings dramatically increase during the deferral period anyway), but I doubt that's going to happen.

I've heard from many sources (and spread myself) an urban myth that the loan is written off when you reach the age of 50. Since this is only 17 years away for me now I'm starting to wonder if it's true but a cursory look through the literature and websites for the Student Loans Company (or whoever owns my loan these days) doesn't mention it, and why should they?

Anyone got confirmation of this?

[Update: Should have Googled first, as always. This BBC news piece from 2000 says "Loans are cancelled... after 25 years or when borrower reaches 50" which is good enough for me!]

[Update 2: I've been questioned about my perceived poverty lifestyle choice in the comments to this post and have responded.]

On Saturday, having spent the week in Winchester marshaling my mother and stepfather into clearing their house into storage, preparing it for damp-proofing, packing for New Zealand and generally staying sane, I took the day off. Dave C, who I've known since school days, popped over in his car and we went for a drive in the Hampshire countryside. After breaking into the ruins of Bishops Waltham Palace (it was closed for the winter but there was a hole in the hedge) and taking photos we moved onto Wickham for tea, since that village has a lot of tea houses.

Our initial mood was reminiscent of Withnail. As two young men, fresh from committing the crime of trespass, we would indulge in some high-irony by taking tea and perhaps cake amongst the gentiles of rural Hampshire. However, it turned out that we actually wanted tea in the non-ironic sense. We also wanted the soup of the day because we were hungry and liked the idea of it. And while we may have discussed, amongst other things, the notion of writing as spell casting, creating new realities with words, we also took in international politics and did so in a civilised manner.

We then clambered around an old railway bridge like teenagers. After that we visited a church and speculated on the history of the walls, pondering when sections were added and whether it has suffered subsidence.

It's really quite odd being a thirtysomething...

Knackered.

Later...

I'm off to my mum's tomorrow to help her and stepdad pack up the house before their move to New Zealand (which still hasn't really sunk in, truth be told) and given that everything will be in boxes I probably won't be able to get online for a week. This won't be a problem and I'm quite relishing the break but it does mean emails and site maintenance won't be dealt with.

I've also done the blogging equivalent of making sure my cat is fed. Every day Andy will switch on my computer and let NetNewsWire update my feed subscriptions. (Yes, I stopped using Bloglines a while back - it wasn't updating Flickr feeds regularly enough and eventually I just preferred having feeds in a separate app).

So barring any semi-drunken postings in the early hours I'll see you all in a week. Be good.

So I'm sitting on the bus wondering why I'm having trouble writing a fricking blog entry about my weekend in London when it occurs to me that, other than the gig (which I intend to write about separately later) I didn't actually do that much. This could be a damning indictment on my ever-so-exciting life these days that a weekend not really doing much in a different city to the norm is such a radical thing that I feel it must be blogged about at length. I was even contemplating a series of posts.

So here's my weekend in point form.

Friday

Arrived at Marylebone 5pm. Took tube to Whitechapel. Kath isn't home yet so go buy bagels on Brick Lane. Kath comes home, have dinner, Kath goes out on date, I go for walk around City and riverside at night taking photos.

Saturday

Get up around noon. Go to Spitz to help set up gig, pausing to take some photos around Spitalfields. Discover they don't really need my help so go for another walk through City, over Millennium Bridge and into Tate Modern to check the Rachel Whiteread exhibition. Like this a lot, but then I have a thing for cardboard boxes in absurd quantities. Spend about 10 minutes there and go back to gig.

Gig occured. It was great. More later.

Go home, chat with Kath about stuff and she introduces me to the frightening concept of using two points in the Photoshop Curves tool to create an S curve. Brain explodes. Can't sleep due to work shift patterns and got to sleep about 5am.

Sunday

Walk to Angel for Flickrmeet at 12.30. Was meeting Anna but she was late. Thought I spotted the actual meet itself but turned my back at they'd all gone. Give up on Anna and phone Andy Konky Kru, arranging to meet at the British Museum. Anna arrives and locates the Flickrmeet which has decamped to a pub due to the weather. Since Andy is mobile-free can't cancel so set up a proxy meeting with Anna for later.

Meet Andy in the Great Court. Pop over to Gosh!, the comic shop, for an hour or so, discovering that cartoonist John Chandler works there now. Realised I'm terminally out of touch with what's out in comics and could easily spend a grand in there just on graphic novels and reprint volumes.

Anna turns up and we go to the pub for a bit. Turns out Ade Brown has a spare ticket for a Jeffrey Lewis gig on Monday which Anna's also going to so make more proxy plans to go. Go back to Kath's flat, forgoing my strict walking rule and taking the bus as it's raining and I'm getting tired.

Monday

Got up and felt a bit lousy. Wondered what I would do before meeting Anna at seven or whenever our proxy meeting might happen. Realised I wasn't going to arrange to meet anyone else and was about to spend the next few hours moping around the cold empty house so decided I wanted to go home. I was missing Birmingham. I was missing my flat. Thought this somehow significant.

Got bus to Marylebone, got on train, felt a strange sense of rightness about arriving in Birmingham, got home about 6pm. Spent next 36 hours in Photoshop.

And that, dear friends, was my exciting weekend in London. As you can tell, it was mainly spent taking photos and I really should just let them speak for themselves, so here they are (first 26 in this set).

I've been thinking about my big project for this year and it's reached the point where I need to get it down before it morphs into something even more stupid and unattainable. So here it is.

I'm going to write a book.

Now, that doesn't mean I'm actually going to publish a book - just that the "book" model seems like the best structure to work with. Chapters, a vague narrative structure, a fair amount of depth, that sort of thing. And if at the end of it someone wants to turn it into a proper book then that'll be a nice bonus.

The book is going to be a travel guide to the Birmingham Outer Circle bus route, which is why it has to be a book because anything smaller will just be interminably dull. The basic format I'm planning on is as follows:

• Travelogue: accounts of visiting sections of the route from a personal perspective. Think Iain Sinclair, but only a little bit. They key here is "personal".
• Photographs: looking more at the quirky details than grand panoramas (partly because there's not much grand on the route).
• History: this is where it turns into something bigger. I intend to research each section of the route and discover how these areas came to be. This will involve going to the central library and diving headlong into the murky world of local history, but I know a couple of people who already swim there so at the very least I'll have a guide.
• Maps: Every good travel book has maps but I'll be looking at interesting ways of using them. An obvious thing will be to GeoTag the photos so they can be mapped around the route. It'd be interesting to do that with the words as well, not just have them reference a map but have that work the other way. There's also the fact that the route is circular without a beginning or end so maybe he book should be too. That kind of stuff (most of which isn't really book-like, but whatever.)

The plan to actually achieve this is fairly simple. The route will be dictated by where the Number 11 bus goes. I'll chop this up into 20 or so manageable sections (the route is 27 miles long) basing each one around a specific landmark, such as Bearwood High Street or Winson Green Prison. I'll then spend a day at each section taking photos and notes, followed by research, followed by a return visit. I'll then write a draft chapter for the blog, fully expecting feedback to fill it out. Then when it's all over I'll do a few trips around the entire route to give it some continuity and structure and edit it all into a "book".

After that, who the hell knows. Maybe it'll get published and I'll be able to retire on the earnings. Maybe I'll just move to onto something else. Whatever happens, it should keep me nice and busy for the next 10 months, and that's the important thing. I've been faffing around too much recently and need some kind of long term thing.

I'll be looking to start this sometime in March when the weather improves and have all the field work done before October when the weather gets shit again.

Wish me luck...

Full credit for the seeds of this project must go to Diamond Geezer, without whom, etc.

Feeling much better now, thanks for asking, though it was a bit of a nightmare. I think I must have gotten a wee cold there for a bit, thanks no doubt to cycling in the freezing air, but whatever, it had passed by Sunday morning and other than my thumb still being sore (partly related to a sprained wrist ten years ago) everything seems to be in working order.

A slightly disturbing side effect of being knackered and possibly having a cold was my dreams got rather odd. My friends often appear in them but never in a notable way - just as people passing through. This last week though I've been murdering the male ones or getting involved in terribly messy marriages with the females, which was most disconcerting to say the least. It then occurred to me I'd been reading a lot of Gilbert Hendandez's Palomar stories (specifically Poinson River) before bedtime which, amongst other things, have a fair chunk of violent deaths and complicated romances, so that's okay then.

Saturday was mostly spent in my dressing gown watching Spaced with a brief interlude to go shopping (not in my dressing gown, though I expect to do that at some point) with Andy and Alex so we could share a cab home, where I was reminded of how long some people, especially couples it seems, can spend in a supermarket. Me, I'm done in minutes. Them, they spend forever, doing what I have no idea. Still, it did give me a chance to think about varying my diet for the first time in months so I plumped for spag bol as something I hadn't had for a while, could be done very simply if necessary and has room for variation and mutation, specifically into chili. (I later proceeded to pour half the spag into the sink, but we won't dwell on that.) The taxi back from the supermarket took bloody forever to arrive, despite me tempting bad karma by ordering a second one under a different name in the hopes that one of them would get to us before the night was out, which I wouldn't normally do but 5-10 minutes is 5-10 minutes, by golly, and on the way home I repeatedly told myself that while I could have cycled there and shopped twice and still have time to construct a replica Eiffel Tower out of matchsticks I probably wouldn't have bothered in the first place and so it was worth it really. And then it was back to Spaced for the rest of the second series, this time fully dressed, only for Andy to discover the DVDs have a "Homag-o-meter" extra which points out all the references as it runs through, so we'll be watching them again then. But that's no bad thing. I kept thinking I spotted Buffy references only to realise they were things Xander said so they were probably references to something else to begin with. This po-mo entertainment world can be so complicated sometimes...

Sunday was a relatively early start (bearing in mind I'd been getting to bed at five and up at one for work this last week) for my first pseudo-commercial (in that I was paid with lunch) photo shoot for An Untitled Musical Project about which I shall write more later, but for now here's the initial selection taken in the wilds of Selly Oak.

Then after pouring over the photos for a few hours Andy and Alex announced they were going to watch a movie, which seemed like a good idea, so I joined them for Bubble Boy, a film starring Jake Gyllenhaal in his pre-hearthrob days which was surprisingly brilliant. Surprisingly because it should have been fucking awful being a by-the-numbers teen comedy road trip type film with a wacky cast of D-list actors more normally employed in animation voiceovers of the non-Pixar variety. But like Sky High (another film that should have been shit but became my favourite film of last year) it had enough absurd moments of milk-through-the-nose hilarity and slapstick and enough self-awareness of it's innate stupidity to drag it round the back of the film quality spectrum and jettison it onto the hallowed platform of films that are so far beyond "so bad it's good" as to be genius.

Or maybe Andy and I are just entering some kind of post-Empire senility where the years of po-faced pseudo movie-criticism have taken their toll, the hero directors of our youth being revealed as the workman-like practitioners they always were forcing us to revel in sub-Disney comedies. Though Alex liked it too and she's like a drama student and shit. Ah, whatever...

Had an iffy couple of weeks, truth be told. Nothing specific and I'm tempted to just put it down to January and that combination of dreary weather and the niggling feeling, however much you try and rationalise it away, that one should be taking a step back and taking stock of where one sits in the universe which doesn't necessarily paint a pretty picture. Oh, and a singularly massive lack of employment from the agency didn't help, especially as I'd earmarked January as a bank-balance filling month. I'm used to being on standby for work but morning after morning of waiting for the call and then finding myself at a loose end when it doesn't come gets a little dispiriting. Yes, there are plenty of things I could be doing but the drive to do them just isn't there. So very little to report, hence the blog quietness.

I did finally get some work on Friday which should be permanent for the next few weeks, working at a courier depot humping parcels in and out of vans and trucks every evening which, as you might know by now, is pretty much my perfect job. I haven't had a box humping job for what seems like ages and it's great, like a workout only you get paid. Unfortunately it's on the other side of the city but I'm coming to terms with the fact that there's very little industrial work in Bournville (despite living right next to the blimmin' Cadbury factory!). The shift does mean all the gigs I was planing on going to this month have been knocked on the head but, while a bit of a pisser, it's not the end of the world, especially as I'm going to be around for whatever passes for daylight at this time of year. Once my fitness levels build up again (the car park didn't do me any favours in that department) I'll probably start cycling there too, weather permitting, which should get me ready for the Outer Circle Flickr Bike Tour, especially as I suspect it's going to need a number of goes to cover properly.

As for the ennui I'm reluctant to blog a bunch of moaning but at the same time it's probably useful to get this shit out in the open so it's revealed as the pointless niggling it really is, so stand by for that.

In the last few years my immediate family all moved to within a hundred or so miles of each other for the first time since 1979 which was great but as I mentioned, ooh, this time last year it feels a little odd as I'm not used to them potentially being in the same place. Thankfully for my irrational side the natural order is asserting itself. My brother-in-law went freelance last year taking a three month job in Amsterdam and my sister and the kids have joined him, living in an apartment overlooking a canal opposite the zoo. They may stay there, they may not and while somewhat drastic it's not actually that surprising for them to revert to nomadity. And then over Xmas my mum officially announced that she and my step-dad are moving to New Zealand for a year in March. Meanwhile my dad, who moved here permanently a while back after 20-odd years in Texas, is doing loads of consultancy work around the world so I never really know where he is. Of course the net means it doesn't really matter where they are but it does feel like something close to situation normal again.

Meanwhile I'm pretty sure I'm not going anywhere for the foreseeable future. It's going to take something pretty drastic to get me out of this flat...

I'm getting one of those backlogs of things I think are going to take lots of time to write about but probably aren't but even though I rationally know this I keep putting off writing about them and they mount up, so here's a summary of the last few days for you to skim.

Friday. What happened on Friday? Oh yeah, my bike, which I've had for a little over a year now, got its first puncture last week and I fixed it but it didn't hold so I bought a new inner tube but when I put the wheel back on it wouldn't sit properly and eventually, after much faffing and tea, I notice a ballbearing had gone missing somehow from the spindle-wotsit and of course I have no spares because I've never had to fix this bike to this desgree and the nearest bike shop is a bike ride away and the bike has no wheel, and it's 4pm and I need to cycle later on tonight, so a brisk walk to Halfords (pausing briefly to take a photo) where they don't have my ballbearing in stock but after a few seconds pleading if they might have one in a jar of random bits out back the chap finds a spare set which he lets me have gratis and once again the staff of Halfords Selly Oak win my admiration and thanks.

And then, having fixed the bike to a satisfactory level, and noted the similarity between how a bike when fixed will never be quite as good as a new bike in the same way a JPEG when tweaked can never be corrected back to its original quality, followed by my noting how tediously geeky that comparison is, and having had some food, it was off to the Jug for the Misty's Big Adventure Xmas gig which was superb and wonderful and which I shall write about in full later. This was followed by a Balti in Moseley village with Shaun and Kats which was satisfactory but we really should have gone to Ladypool Rd and it was stupid of me not to.

The Balti meant I got home late and having lots of photos couldn't resist checking them and uploading a few so I got to bed about 2am, rising at 7.30 to go to the car park, deciding that I couldn't face the horror of the bus so I cycled, what with the bike being all fixed and everything, and it took 45 minutes to get to Solihull, quicker than the bus, arriving slightly exhausted but in a much better mood than usual. The car park was busy, as expected, but rather tedious with nothing exciting to report - lots of lost tickets and a few issues with the barrier - but I made a couple of quid from abandoned trollies that people couldn't be arsed to wheel back and that always brightens the day. One advantage of the car park is it's above a supermarket so I was able to pick up a couple of bottles of wine and some brandy butter for Xmas, except I left the brandy butter in the fridge so won't be able to enjoy it until New Years Day, but it'll be worth it.

And then another 45 minute ride home to be greeted by a reasonably full living room of people getting ready to set off to Doug and Sara's pre-Xmas party/gathering/thing, so a quick shower and snack-food dinner (we have a tremendous collection of snack-food right now) I joined the throng for a very enjoyable few hours of beer, nibbles and chats.

Xmas Day and I was awoken at 9am-ish with the offer of tea which seemed like a good enough reason to get up. We did the Xmas morning stuff, mooching around the living room watching Aardman animations videotaped on Xmas days past, until it was time for the Andy's to go to their respective Xmas day venues. Matt turned up for a bit and we set off on our bikes to his and Marv's place for the rest of the day. Dinner was meatballs in sauce, which seemed a bit wrong at first but worked out perfectly, followed by the Xmas pudding I'd made a few weeks previously from Jez's recipe and it was also perfect. Then we went for a walk around the parks of Kings Heath which are much nicer than I was expecting having only seen them from the road. And then we watched Doctor Who which was, as you'll probably be aware, bloody fantastic, so much better than TV at that time deserved to be, and bodes wonderfully for the 2nd series. And then we drank wine and beer and played a driving game on the Playstation, opting not to bother with the actual game but to just play a version where you have to drive into an intersection and crash as spectacularly as possible, which we did again and again until midnight-ish by which stage I decided I was far too drunk to cycle home, given the trouble I was having walking to the garden for a smoke, so I crashed on the sofabed.

Boxing day started with fried chipolatas and scrambled eggs after which I figured I'd better head off else I never would, and I had this vague idea I might get some stuff done, but was distracted by the 24 season 3 box set sitting in the living room so I worked through eight episodes before Andy and Celeste got back when I had to stop as they were only 2 episodes in, but Celeste had a Bruce Springsteen DVD where he performs and dissects his songs on stage so we watched that and it was very enjoyable. After that I figured I might as well crack on with 24 for a bit before bed so I did, getting through another 12 episodes by 5am. Ouchy. But very good stuff. Utterly bonkers and over the top, which is how I like my US TV.

Tuesday I got up very late in the afternoon, finished off 24, finally sorted and uploaded the photos from the Misty's gig, watched Doctor Who again thanks to BitTorrent and quite possibly enjoyed it even more (and for the record I never cared for Doctor Who ever at all) and, um, here we are.

Wednesday... Looks kinda frosty out there...

Oddly enough I'm feeling really Christmassy for the first time in years. Must be all this Bournville malarkey...

As usual I got a few hand made cards from comics people which are always a pleasure (and thanks! (also thanks to the other card senders!)), but Andy Luke's emailed Xmas comic took the biscuit by a long mile and so I must share. Ye fucking gods, man, you are skirting the edges of sanity with aplomb!

Have a good one.

I was trying to remember when I last did a real zine and without digging them all out I think it was around 1998, so today was rather momentous as I printed out and stapled (with my dusty but trusty long-armed stapler) the very rough draft of the GDFAF zine in all it's 44 page glory. Mainly this was so I could check the layouts I'd done on the computer actually worked on paper but I was also getting impatient and wanted to hold it in my hands, no matter how unfinished (and in the case of the last seven pages unwritten) it was.

As expected, the whole experience is kinda strange. Firstly it's interesting how web-based my design thinking is these days. I've structured the reviews as one long flow of text rather than making each post an individual item, which works because that's how they were presented in the first place. Originally I tried breaking them up but it just felt wrong. I've also inserted the photos in the same manner as the posts with each band having a photo at the point where they're talked about. Again, this works but it does mean the layout of each page isn't consistent and is probably something I'd have avoided back in the day.

Another weird thing has been going back to DTP. Back in the 90s the most advanced I got was using WordPerfect to lay out the text in columns leaving spaces for the images which would be stuck on with glue later. Now I'm using the Apple Pages package for the whole thing and producing a PDF (using the excellent CocoaBooklet to paginate everything properly). Again, it's really strange coming at this from a web design perspective. The whole concept of objects not flowing with the text is really odd along with the fact that inserting or deleting a sentence will mess up all manner of things further down the document. And there are some limitations to Pages that I can't find a way around (not helped by Pages being a fucking stupid name for a program when it comes to Google...). In fact, unless I'm just doing it all horribly wrongly I'd say Pages is not a robust DTP package by any stretch of the imagination. It's very user friendly but that's probably its downfall. But I also suspect a lot of this is me really wanting to just print out the text and break out the glue.

And then there's the photos themselves. My zines were usually about comics so the artwork was easy to get down to stark black and white for photocopying but my gig photos tend towards large patches of colour, usually red, so I have concerns about the zine being populated by black rectangles. Some experimenting did reveal the Halftone Pattern filter in Photoshop which is pretty crude but seems to do the job, though I'm not overly happy with seeing my lovely hi-res photos reduced to the resolution of a cameraphone. But then I am going for that photocopied zine aesthetic...

The weirdest thing, though, is how long it is. 15,000 words doesn't seem that much when you're scrolling in a browser but spread over 35 pages it's most impressive. I look at it and think "I wrote that".

I may have gotten my zine bug back.

I am unwell. Which is not much of a surprise really, but still kinda annoying. Why, I wonder to myself, am I unable to do a project like GDFAF without suffering afterwards? On Sunday I was feeling more euphoric than I've felt in months but come Monday I'm knackered, weak-kneed, thick-headed and have the most aggressive chesty cough. All very tedious.

So I'm mostly sleeping, watching all 12 hours of LotR and slowly editing the GDFAF posts for the zine. Any new content will have to wait.

00:45

Get home from Actress and Bishop to empty flat. Put on washing including combats and jumper which are suffering from 14 gigs worth of sweat and smoke.

01:15

Andy and Alex come home. Chat for a bit.

01:45

Put out washing to dry

05:00

Finish writing and post up GDFAF #14. Feel a bit of a headache coming on plus a sense of adrenalin drop now it's all over.

06:00

Photos uploaded to Flickr and I'm feeling knackered. Go to bed.

06:30

Can't sleep. Realise headache is because I got up a couple of hours before the gig and had a couple of pints to celebrate. In other words I am having that kind of mini-hangover people get in the afternoon after a mid-morning drink.

07:00

Get up. Have sandwich and take some paracetamol. Decide to stay up and potter around before having a snooze later on.

08:30

Andy gets up. Chat.

10:00

Empty veg scrapings and teabags in compost heap. Discover my DIY compost heap has fallen over. Disconcerted but not too worried as have ordered a proper compost bin. Notice new fence has been put up which explains it all. Pick up spilled compost by hand which isn't a problem as it's all frozen.

11:00

Have "supper" - pesto and pasta. Realise I've pretty much run out of food after the fortnight.

12:30

Feeling a little tired. Check with flatmate that he's not planning on using the living room and crash out on the sofa, the idea being it'll be easier to get up from than my bed. Set alarm on mobile for 15:30.

13:00

Kept awake by the Saturday afternoon performance of the Bournville Carillon playing Greensleeves.

13:30

Just as starting to doze off, woken by mobile ringing, which I've left on other side of room to force me to get up. Sister calling to check I'm coming to Banbury this evening to see her play in the Banbury Symphony Orchestra. "Did I wake you?" Mum will have my ticket for tonight's performance. Tell her I'm getting in about seven.

14:00

Alex phones for Andy. Go get Andy.

15:30

Alarm goes off. Reset for 16:00

16:00

Alarm goes off. Don't reset. Also don't actually get off sofa.

17:00

Andy wakes up me. Realise I have one hour until my train to Banbury leaves from central Birmingham.

17:20

Showered and changed, but having had no tea or food, I'm on my bike. Buy ticket from Bournville station to avoid queues but cycle on into town.

17:45

Cycling up Hurst St I realise I've missed the train from Moor St but can get the one from New St.

17:53

Virgin train pulls into to New St. Platform. Conductor assistant bloke thing points me to the far end of the train to put my bike.

17:54

Door for compartment for bikes is locked. Put bike in "vestibule".

17:55

Am informed by lady (in a very nice red motorcycle jacket as it happens) that I can't leave bike there. Will have to take it to other end of train.

17:56

Am shouted at for cycling on platform. Fair enough realy.

17:57

Bike is on train. I'm on train. Sit down.

18:03

Train leaves.

18:20

Decide this day is fucking insane and therefore good blog fodder. Start thinking of a post with time stamps and short pithy descriptions of what's happened.

18:40

Fall asleep for a few minutes.

19:05

Arrive in Banbury. Carry bike out of station (lot of stairs) and cycle to church.

19:07

Look for cafe to get tea and food but being a small town everything is shut except the pubs.

19:10

Banbury has a major shortage of iron railings around the Horse Fair area.

19:20

Find the sole cycle parking bars in the area and lock up. Roll fag.

19.25

Meet mum outside church. Ask people at desk if they have any tea. No, but there will be refreshments during the interval. Any tea? No, but there will be soft drinks. Coke? No, orange juice.

19:30

Concert starts. Very nice. Nearly fall asleep during first piece but manage to stay awake.

20:30

Interval. Orange juice kinda does the job. Stay awake during second half thanks to some loud Tchaikovsky. Getting very hungry.

21:15

Concert ends. Back to sister's house for tea and pizza.

22:00

Am asked if seeing my sister playing violin has made me want to break out the trombone for the first time in over a decade. Confess I'm thinking about it, but mainly to see what it sounds like when amped through Andy's guitar effects pedals.

22:40

Feeling much better after tea and pizza, leave sister's to catch last train. Am offered a lift by friends of hers who have a big car but decline as it'll be quicker for me to cycle.

22:44

Arrive at station. That was quick. Wait for train. Start getting cold.

23:04

Train to Birmingham pulls in. No cycle compartment and no big luggage areas to put bike. Rest bike against door and check each station to make sure it isn't on the platform side. Train isn't heated. Get colder.

00:14

Arrive at Birmingham Moor St. It's very very cold indeed. Start cycling but don't warm up. In fact my legs get colder, which is very strange.

00:45

Get home having cycled through a substantial amount of frost. Lock up. Make tea. Have sandwich. Warm up. Check computer.

01:30

Go to bed.

05:30

Wake up after only four hours sleep. Hmm...

06:30

Decide to get up and see how the day progresses. At least I'm back on relatively normal time now.

08:00

Have massive fry-up breakfast using the remains of my food.

08.45

Start dealing with the massive backlog of email from the fortnight.

09:30

Start writing this post. Have to check in seven year old HTML book for how to do definition lists.

09:57

Finish writing this post. Decide this sort of post probably shouldn't become a regular feature.

The GDFAF Day Off was spent indoors watching a DVD.

The Living Room, compared to other rooms in the house, is quite comfortable and cozy, but unlike The Bedroom it's not designed for sleeping in. With a capacity of about 40 it's a good place for a small party or gathering and while it only has seating for eight there's plenty of floor space if you want to slum it. The sofas are very nice, soft but with a firmness that helps the back. Of note is the very strange wall paper on one wall which looks like it was made of the skin of a furry beast but in fact is some bizarre flocking experiment gone horribly wrong. Also of note is the quarter hourly chimes of the Bournville Carillon which, until you get used to them, can be rather disconcerting. There's also a drum kit and a smattering of guitars should you desire an impromptu jam session and a rather absurd quantity of books, but we weren't here for such things.

We were here to watch a DVD which given the paucity of such things in this establishment was a bit a challenge but we settled on working through the four disk edition of Lord of the Rings : The Return of the King, specifically the Appendices. I'd actually seen these before in a different living room and from a different box of DVDs but, given the nature of digital duplication, the performance was pretty identical (if slightly smaller). I was struck by how the audio/visual entertainment system in this Living Room was similar in layout to the small gig in that all the machines used to create the entertainment were on show with many cables visible.

I broke my "no drinking at gigs" rule by having many cups of tea during the performance but thanks to the episodic nature of the RotK appendices we were able to pause for toilet breaks with no major disruption. The informal nature of the event allowed for a fair bit of discussion about the amazing level of detail and passion that went into the production and statements such as "this sort of thing should be the normal way of working" were heard. There was also much laughter at the absurdness of Sean Astin, as is to be expected.

By approximately 2am, and having endured one and a half disks worth of extras (I didn't keep a track of how long this took) we decided to call it a night before getting to the endless back slapping and "we're fucking marvelous, aren't we" moments, but over all it was enjoyable stuff.

The Living Room is a good place to go when you're feeling a little tired and want to chill out in a place that doesn't have a computer in it yet is not The Kitchen or The Outdoors. It somehow facilitates conversation well in a manner quite distinct from a motorbike ride and thanks to the judicious use of radiators and curtains remains fairly toasty into the early hours.

I think I'll definitely be returning to The Living Room again in the future.

Next week has been figured out. If you want to join me check the Upcoming.org page. I think Acoustic Ladyland on Tuesday could be the killer gig, but who can really tell.

I'm taking a night off. After nine nights on the trot I'm bordering on extreme exhaustion and I still have next week to get through. On the one hand I could push myself for the perverse glory of having completed the marathon but I risk not being in a fit state to actually write about the experience and that strikes me as more important.

So I'm going to extend the fortnight by one day, finishing on Friday 18th. Tonight will be spent on the sofa with a DVD. My apologies.

On the stairs, queuing for tonight's gig, I heard those fateful words, "are you Pete Ashton?" I'd been spotted in public by one of my readers and yet me tell you, it's a rather odd experience. I've had the "are you..." question before but usually I knew the person asking and it was at some event or other where I was expecting that sort of thing to happen. This was the first time a perfect stranger had announced to my face that they were a reader of my blog and, dare I say it, a "fan." Darren (at least I think that's his name - cringing apologies if I'm wrong!) had stumbled across this site about six months ago while Googling for Misty's Big Adventure and had stuck around following the blog and podcasts. He asked how the GDFAF week was going and we chatted for a bit about how odd the whole chatting for a bit was.

Suddenly I remembered I was standing with my mate Steve who had recently been asking me about this sort of thing - the fact that there are people out there who know about me but I have no idea who they are, famous for fifteen people and all that. You might remember Steve as the guy who recorded a couple of tracks in our living room which I played in Pete Radio 18 in September. So I said to Darren, you remember that guy who did those songs in the living room? Yes, said Darren, enthusing mildly about how he'd enjoyed that. Well, I said pointing at Steve. This is him.

I think Steve understands where I'm coming from now.

Oddly enough I had another "are you..." moment during the gig from Andy Pryke but this was expected as we've been failing miserably to meet for a while now. However, I wouldn't be surprised if it happens a lot more now I'm reviewing so many Birmingham gigs because Andy and I, we fucking own the Birmingham music scene when it comes to Google. Check it out: Distophia, Klopeks, Misty's Big Adventure (I'll give Andy that one...) and so on.

I'd love to say this was premeditated but like all the best global domination plans it's was completely unintentional. Be interesting to see how it all develops.

(Oh, and Darren, sorry for turning you into content like that!)

After three days getting up a 6am to catch a bus to Erdington to lug boxes around for eight hours before traveling all the way back to Bournville, I was, well, shattered would be a word for it. The job itself wasn't that bad - I quite like lugging boxes as a form of exercise, though the guy I was working with was a miserable bastard with a black heart so that was kinda exhausting. He wasn't a bad man, in fact he was pretty generous and his back heart was in the right place, but he was bitter and twisted and he liked me so I was stuck with him and his moanings, which made me all moany and complainy which is never good, especially when my defenses were weakened by the number 11 bus. So we shall speak of it no more.

On Wednesday night, having decided enough was enough and that I wouldn't be going back, I returned home to a big Amazon box. It was finally here. Once my tax rebate cheque cleared I'd ordered a Fuji Finepix S7000 from Amazon which had caused my bank to go into spasms as it was the largest sum I'd spent on my card since neolithic times which then led to my first experience of phone banking ("I'm phoning India and this isn't a problem... I'm phoning India and this isn't a problem... Christ alive, I'm phoning India!") to unfreeze everything, and here it was, all lovely and new and with a respectably large instruction manual which was digested with glee all evening, the bad vibes of the week to date suddenly banished.

This morning I'd arranged to meet Andy and Alex at a local cafe for breakfast at ten but the knackerdness of the past few days had caught up with me and I was woken at ten by Alex's text telling me they'd be a little late so I rushed down to the Last Chance Cafe in Stirchley on what was an uncommonly warm October morning. The greasy spoon was suitably greasy and full of men in hi-viz jackets. I'm at work, my sleepy brain said, and I ordered the Full English and waited. No sign of Andy and Alex. I ate my breakfast (not bad but nothing to write home about) in the slightly bizarre cafe (rockabilly theme with random kitsch on the walls in such magnitude it transcended mere kitsch and came out the other side) with still no sign. Breakfast finished I phoned Alex. They were in a different cafe on Bournville lane that I'd never noticed was there despite the massive "Cafe" painted on the wall. So I trundled over there for another cup of tea and to show off my camera. "Have you given her a name?" asked Alex. "I don't think it's a girl" said Andy as the somewhat phallic lens extended. For future reference their breakfast was judged better than mine.

We then wandered up to the deli on Linden Road and I continued up to Cotteridge to loop around back down through Stirchley to try out the camera. I'd noticed a load of interestingly crap shops from the top deck of the bus and they were indeed interesting even at ground level. By the time I got back to base I'd taken over 100 photos, 26 of which you can see here.

All of them were taken on automatic with no fiddling about. I did play with the zoom a fair bit because, hell, I've never had a zoom before. Zoom rocks the fucking bollocks! I was a bit concerned about camera shake but they all came out crystal clear, most astonishingly this leaf which was taken from about three metres away. I'm not sure I can give an honest review of the S7000 because my experience has been like moving from an 100cc moped to a Ducatti but I'm incredibly impressed with the handling and control it gives, not to mention the quality of the shots. It's also worth noting that while most of my photos with the old digicam have been carefully tweaked in Photoshop these hardly needed anything.

But what of the Nikon, you might be asking. Well, I got my first batch of slides developed and scanned about half of them in using a dedicated slide scanner and I'm not overly impressed. Yes, I know it takes time to get the manual exposure right, yes, I know I shouldn't be overly critical of my first attempts, and yes, I know it's a wonderful piece of kit with great potential, but it seems like a backward step with far too much hassle involved. Once I get some time I'll have a hack at the photos in Photoshop to see if any are worth making public and once I've had a play with the manual controls on the S7000 (yes, it does fully manual exposure and focus) I may return to film just to see. But right now digital rules. Enormous potentials have opened up and I'm keen to explore them.

(In case you're wondering, the camera is a joint family combi birthday/Xmas present so thankyou mia famiglia!)

Andy Zoop runs our garden. It's not that large - a patch of lawn surrounded by beds - but it's nice to sit in and provides us with many herbs. It's also something of a wildlife garden to encourage insects and the like. In fact Andy's gardening technique mainly involves looking at the plants. In contrast my gardening technique involves violently ripping things out of the earth. And so since we're now in early autumn my special skills come into play, which is handy as I really like this sort of thing and it's been a while since anyone's paid me to do it.

Once I'd cut back a good third of the greenery I noticed the massive pile of brambles and branches and realised I fundamental flaw in my plan. The garden, being small, doesn't have a dumping ground. I asked Andy about this and he had a solution - a patch of earth that, due to its position out of the sun, resolutely refused to grow anything. I caught up with his thinking - compost heap.

One of the few regrets I had on moving from Kingstanding was leaving my compost bin behind. I'd gotten into the habit of saving all the organic kitchen material and it seemed really weird to just be dumping it in the normal bin. So this was certainly a good thing. Part of my soul has returned. I shall turn rotten plants into fertile soil.

Rather than buying a big plastic bin I'm going for the DIY approach. It will take a while as I'm also going for the no-money approach, raiding the many skips that decorate suburbia. Here's where we're currently at:

I started by staking a circle in the ground with random pieces of wood and bamboo canes. I then lined the inside of this with cardboard and filled it with the cuttings. Next I surrounded the cardboard with a piece of carpet underlay from a skip and tied it tight with string. The lid was made from a kitchen cabinet door with more carped nailed to the underside. This carpet will keep everything warm over the winter. Ventilation will come from the base (where I deliberately put all the thicker brambles) and the rear which is protected from the elements by the fence and not so thickly lined. The next stage is to line the outside with plastic, again for warmth but also to keep the rain off (damp is good, but not too damp). Large sheets of plastic are somewhat hard to come by but like I said, lots of skips in this area.

See also, Wikipedia on Composting.

I was once accused by Mardou of "blogging my dinner" when I took this photo which I found a rather odd accusation as I don't think I ever had before. Okay, maybe once or twice but it's not an obsession or anything. But one should always try to live up to people's opinions of you because it helps those people feel comfortable in the knowledge that the world is as they assumed. So in that spirit, I present my adventures in ratatouille.

It began during a visit to my sisters where, during a spot of gardening she presented me with two enormous courgettes which I managed to squeeze into my bag without damaging. Since I generally have no more than two recipes on the go at any given time, and since neither of them currently involve courgettes, I was at something of a loss. I'd intend to cook something with them but the dissonance involved in firstly deciding what and then ensuring I had the ingredients to do so was just too much. Eventually, with the patient help and advice of Andy and Alex, we plumped for a ratatouille as something that was piss easy to make, cheap and potentially freezable. I made a list of what was needed and, about a week later, managed to actually buy the stuff. Today I made it.

I started with this:

and ended up with this:

You can see all the stages of this grand adventure in this photoset. Outside of the whole cooking thing I was quite taken with the photographic potential of vegetables. Something to investigate.

Anyway, it was a success. At least I think it was. I don't really like ratatouille that much.

Went for a walk with the F2 today. I texted my camera-geek chum Lewis about it and he nerded out big time which was satisfying to see, so after a quick lesson in the kitchen, putting all the somewhat abstract stuff I'd been reading about into context, Lauren, Lewis and I set off down the canal into town. This was different in a number of ways - firstly I'd never walked down that canal - I've cycled it loads but it's a very different experience on foot. I'm going to have to train myself to cycle to a place and then walk around, or just start doing more walking. (The only downside was I had to get the bus home, but I did capture a nice cloud shot on the way).

More important was taking photos with someone else who's also looking at things in that photography way - another first and very enlightening. By the time we reached the centre we were both looking at Birmingham with fresh eyes, or at least I was. Maybe Lewis is just one of those people who sees stuff, I dunno. But it was good and bodes well for this Flickr Birmingham outing I'm trying to rustle together - essentially getting a bunch of local photographers to meet at a certain point at a certain time to stroll around taking photos. Non-Flickerites are welcome of course.

But the really weird thing is I've taken 20-odd photos and I have no fecking idea how they've come out. I want to plug the F2 into the Mac but oddly enough there isn't a USB port on the side. Apparently the film needs to be "developed" or something and that can't happen until I've used up all the shots. It's all very arcane.

It's stating the bleeding obvious but taking photos with an SLR is very different to a compact automatic. It's a bit like learning to drive in that there are a number of stages (focus, aperture, light metre, exposure...) which slow you right down until they become second nature. Eventually the camera will become an extension of my hand but right now it's very slow, meaning I messed up a couple of shots that would have been perfect with the compact. That said I did notice that the slowing down meant I took more time over the composition, which is a good thing. Right now though I can see both cameras having advantages and whatever the outcome of this trial run I think I'll still keep a pocket automatic to hand.

Since it was a camera kinda day we dawdled in Jessops for a while where we bumped into Matt and Marv who were buying a digicam. Some people might be weirded out by the coincidence, but I say when the coincidences stop, that's when I start worrying.

The reason Shaun felt justified in driving 150 miles to the Misty's gig last night was that he had a meeting in Birmingham on Tuesday so could fit it in, just about. And so I discovered that he's actually good friends with Kathy, another of the Bonfire Radio podcasters. Turns out they work together. And she's going to this meeting in Birmingham too. So we met up in the Tap and Spile, it being the only decent pub near their hotel.

I guess you'd call it a Podmeet.

It's a bit like a Blogmeet in that you sit in a pub and talk about all manner of shit, occasionally veering into podcasting but no really, truth be told. No-one passing would be any the wiser but sitting at that table were the creators of Stroka Sounds, Cold Citrus and Pete Radio all being all cutting edge and that. It was cool, if slightly odd in that way when you meet people who've been reading your blog for a while.

I dunno if there's ever been a Podmeet before. Probably, but if not then this was the first, if three people counts. Apparently their company will be sending them to Birmingham again for more meetings so maybe we should try and drag Dubber and Spoons and other podcasters along. It'd be, like, well wicked and that.

Or maybe I'll just meet them in the pub and we'll talk shit. Because I'm glad to say, having never met them before despite syndicating their shows, Shaun and Kathy are good people.

It's my birthday on Monday, though I won't be making a fuss. Thirty three might be a cool number (except I won't be a "long player" until next January) but age wise it's nothing special. I did have the "have you thought about what you want for your birthday?" conversation with mum though which I find kinda amusing as I used to ask her the same thing when I was a kid and she never knew. These days I have no idea - things I want are far too expensive and I have no need for ephemerous trinklets - but we did agree on some kind of camera fund to replace my aging digicam with something more professional. Anyway, during this chat I joked that I wasn't planning on doing anything special this year - that can wait until I'm 40, which was greeting with a few seconds of silence followed by the whimper along the lines of "my son will be forty one day..." I guess that would be kinda scary, especially if your son is likely to still be living like a 20-something slacker.

That said, there are a few things I'll be doing this next week or so which could be construed as "going out" and "celebrating" my continued existence. Chum Matt is going out for drinks to mark his birthday on Thursday at the Prince of Wales in Moseley and I shall be joining him. Then on Saturday 24th Misty's Big Adventure are playing at the Jug of Ale, also in Moseley. They're also playing on Sunday and I shall be attending both gigs, but I'm treating Saturday as the "party" one with Sunday for photos.

Regarding flatmate-related gigs, Plinth - that's the band with both Andys in it - have a gig on Thursday 29th at Bar Academy while Andy Zoop's other band, Una Corda, have two gigs coming up, one on the 27th at Scrufy Murphys and another on October 7th at the Jug. It's said that the latter, supporting the delightfully named Church of Misery, should be the better of the two so I'll definitely be at that one if not both.

All this makes me realise I forgot to include my Upcoming.org listings in this new redesign. Better rectify that...

Una Corda have an EP out, Proper Position For Floating [1881], which is rather top. You can hear a track on their myspace page and I'll play a track from it in the next podcast. Also, Misty's new Album, The Black Hole, came out last week and it's also rather top, getting some quite hefty rotation on iTunes right now.

In other news...

• Went to stay with sister and the kids for 36 hours to help out while bro-in-law is away on a course. Not much to report - it's just a hectic world of busy over there. We did go swimming though, which was cool. Weightless babies are magic.


• Finally took the plunge and started the British small press comics entry on Wikipedia. It's in no way perfect and needs work, but that's kinda the point. Anyway, you try condensing 30 years of non-heirarchical, decentralised DIY activity into one page and see how you do.


• Went back to the Agency on Monday to re-register for temp work. That rent-thing needs to be paid and to be frank I wouldn't mind going back into the labour force for a little while. I was hoping for something involving lifting and lugging but they've placed me in an office starting Monday for a week or so.


• It's suddenly rather cold, isn't it...

Today Alex decided she wanted to buy a bike and Lewis decided to come over for a visit so we all went to Selly Oak Cycles to buy one. It's a weird little shop with five or so sad looking bikes chained up by the desk with a dark workshop stained with decades of grease stretching to the back. So different to the bright emporiums of cycling joy you usually get and a tad discombobulating.

Alex was after a bike for bimbling about the place, going to the shops, that kind of thing. And it had to be cheap for budgetary reasons but also because there's a significant chance of it being stolen in Selly Oak. A small-ish blue bike caught Alex's attention and after a bit of thought, but not too much, we were on our way home with something not quite resembling this for £35. The bloke in Halfords, where she spent nearly as much on a lock, pump, bungies and, god help us, a horn, said it was a Raleigh Shopper and was well impressed. Lewis rode it around the car park and, with his long ginger hair and cheeky grin, looked like an extra in a Supergrass video.

The rest of the afternoon was spent in the garden sorting it out, tweaking the brakes and mostly fitting the horn which being cheap and essentially a toy didn't have a particularly effective attachment system and thus required a bodge. Alex said she would normally have liked to do all this herself but it was nice to just sit and watch me work with Lewis assisting and I was taken back to the early 1990s when I used to, in retrospect quite bizarrely, hang about with greasy bikers. Back then it was the other way round as I'd sit in garages watching these guys fiddling around with engines and talking in a language that might as well have been Chinese. I never did learn much about bikes but I did drink a lot of tea and learned a shedload about life. One day I should really write about this chunk of my life in detail, but it occurred to me that most of these bikers were in their 30s while I was just out of my teens, and here I am, in my 30s with Alex and Lewis just out of their teens, fiddling with a bike and drinking tea. I somehow doubt they're learning quite so much from me though.

I generally go and visit the various strands of my family. It's not that often they come to visit me. So a few days of family related visitations, while welcome, was a little odd.

On Thursday my mum came up to Birmingham, not just to visit but to stay the night. The last time she did this was 1999. I knew it would be okay but it was still a little discordant. I'm used to people who stay just crashing in the living room. Would my mum be okay with this? Is that mattress hiding behind the sofa suitable for a non-drunk person? Do I have enough bedding?

Of course it was all okay. We went for a nice walk around Bournville in the early evening where I realised I really don't know the details of this curious area. It's often labeled as a hoity-toity posh district but there's a significant "working class" presence that's true to the spirit of the Bournville family. Mum was asking how other areas could replicate this idil since efforts like dumping a garden in a sink estate don't tend to work very well. I think there's a combination of history and tipping point going on here, something like the Broken Windows theory. In other less-buzz-words there's enough niceness here that only a fool would reject it. There was a bunch of blokes in footie tops, the like of which would not seem out of place in your standard boozer, playing Lawn Bowls as we walked through the park. You wouldn't see that in Kingstanding.

That's not to say Bournville is a utopia of Disney-esque levels. There are youths who drink beer on the green and the odd spots of graffiti here and there, but the level of niceness is pushed up to such a degree that these things don't really have any effect.

Friday morning mum and I went into central Brum for a few hours before her train left. I was at a slight loss as to what we would do as I don't spend much time wandering around the centre. It's all shops and I don't shop as a rule. But the new-to-her Bull Ring was of aesthetic interest and we found ourselves in the Selfridges food hall for a laugh at the general absurdity of it all.

Then we wandered over to the markets which I'd glanced at a while back and decided were not of interest. Seems I was deeply and horribly wrong. They're fucking brilliant. Buckets of fruit, veg, meat and fish fresh from the wholesale market behind them and at stupidly low prices. I will have to make regular trips there on the bike to stock up. It's also a good spot for photos with some real characters doing the selling. I guess running a market stall all your life does strange things to the face.

Mum went off and I had about 36 hours to myself before the Chilbertos, being my sister and her brood, turned up on Sunday morning to combine a family day out with visiting Uncle Pete. Spike is smiling and Isobel is pretty much talking. It's cool. We went to the Birmingham Nature Centre as recommended by pretty much everyone with kids I'd asked, and many without. It's brilliant. Dirt cheap to get in and after three hours we'd only gone round once.

Kiddie pics were taken, naturally, but I'm kinda proud of some of them so have inflicted a few upon this post. It's interesting looking at that photo set as there's a marked difference in my photography (and Photoshop post-processing-fu) between now and Xmas, I think for the better.

All in all it was a lovely, if somewhat exhausting, few days. The kids in particular made me realise how slowed down my life has become. When they went off home Andy Zoop and Celeste were in the kitchen and I felt like either I was speeding or they were trapped in some time-vortex. A cup of tea later and I was back with them though. The kids are terrific but I think I'll stick with what I've got for now, for the sake of balance if nothing else.

After that nightmare of upgrading this site to MT 3.2 where they'd fixed all the little bugs that I'd previously assumed were how things worked and have provided the most complex default templates ever css-wise and a comments structure that needs some serious meditation to get your head around (and still isn't working on the Linklog and Podcast sections), well, I'm kinda at a loss for something to write about that isn't fucking tedious and boring. Actually, I probably will write about this experience soon but only once I've figured out a way to make it interesting. I think I've got the angle but it needs work.

Anyway, today was a return to Moseley for the first time since the tornado last month. It was kinda weird in that there's still a lot of scarring - trees roughly butchered back, roofs still half-tiled and workmen absolutely everywhere - but otherwise quite normal.

I was there for some post-tornado work myself. Jez and Nat were replacing their fence which had be crushed by a big tree and since I painted it last year it made a perverse kinda of sense for me to paint it again. Plus I'm absurdly available for odd-jobs at the moment.

It being a stunningly lovely day it was really good to be out in the sun getting mucky again. I miss these kind of jobs. I occasionally think about moving the huge pile of bricks at the end of the drive a few feet to the left just for the hell of it and then moving them back to the right the next day. I wonder if this constitutes a problem.

In the pub on Saturday, along with demanding the right to punch old ladies who let their dogs shit on the pavement (with the wonderful mental image of his dog Badger "sweating bullets" because he's been trained not to shit while on a lead), Jez had talked about "contributing to the hobby deficit" or something which seems to be related to the mass of niche things that have proliferated in this country of late. Stuff like Carp Fishing magazines in high street shops and model railway museums. When he mentioned today he was still thinking about it, it occured to me that if this is a proliferation it's might be because people, probably men mainly, don't tend to have a speciality any more regarding their jobs, or at least not one they care about. If you're some office drone entering data and processing invoices you may well have a desire to actually be good at something interesting, like driving a train or building furniture. So you have a hobby and get really really good at it.

Oddly enough I had a similar conversation with an old flatmate years ago about how, he theorised, hobbies were part of an ancient initiation right for boys who hadn't made their first kill yet. Once your hunt an ox or kill an enemy then you're accepted as an adult in the tribe. Before that you're missing a purpose so you get really really good at something relatively inconsequential, like football statistics or comic book artists. Since we have a lot of blokes doing boring jobs they don't care about which don't give them the same sense of purpose as hunting an ox... Hey, I've just discovered the origins for the rise of the adultescent!

Someone, I think it was the professional fence-putter-upper, say the phrase "mad as an ox" today. Do oxen get mad? I always thought of them as pretty docile creatures that pull things like wagons. Checking in the dictionary the term refers to a castrated bull, which explains why I can't remember ever seeing an on specifically. I'd just assumed they were docile bulls. Still, "mad as an ox" has a nice ring to it.

And then after painting it was over to ex-housemate Sam's new flat, also in Moseley, to set up their bemusing WiFi router, which I did. Go me! Now she and Charlie can comment on each others LiveJournals and IM each other from separate rooms. That flat will henceforth be referred to as the "House of Squeeee" for that is the kind of LJers they are...

In other news I haven't been reading any weblogs since Friday. No reason, but the catching up is getting a bit daunting (350 unread posts, not including linklogs). Hope everyone's okay.

I think I've got my blog back...

The transient man is cursed indeed.

When I moved from Kingstanding to Bournville a few months ago I went through the whole change-of-address thing. It wasn't a particularly big deal as I don't actually get that much mail and it's not like I've never moved house before. (If you're new here I've moved 23 times, or thereabout, since birth.)

A month or so after I moved my debit card expired. I was expecting that changing my address with the bank would mean the new card would be sent to my new address, just as my statements were. But that would be too logical and it was sent to Kingstanding. By courier. And Sam wasn't in. And they didn't leave a note. So it got destroyed. While this wasn't the end of the world it did mean my hosting bill for this site wasn't getting paid so hassle ensued.

Today I got a letter from the Inland Revenue saying, in rather a lot of words, that they'd decided I needed to fill in a tax return from now on. Since I registered as self employed back in May I assumed it was to do with that, except I already knew I was going to have to fill in a return, so maybe it was about my tax refund for last year which I was still waiting for. (Still with me? Good.) In fact it was pretty much this time last year that I got a nice fat cheque through the post so if this meant it was being delayed... But the letter, while detailed, was annoyingly non-specific. So I phoned them. It was about the self-employed thing and nothing to worry about. So I asked them to check on the progress of last year's return.

The cheque was sent out on June 8th.

To my address in Kingstanding.

Since it's obviously been lost in the post (I don't think Sam has been maliciously tearing up my mail) they'll have to send out another one. And that'll take a month or so. What's really annoying is I clearly wrote on the form that while the 2004-5 records were for my residence in Kingstanding I had just moved and could they send the cheque to Bournville please. And you'd've thought that the whole registering as self employed might have forced a change of address on their system.

On the plus side, this does mean they processed my application and released a cheque in a matter of weeks with no queries. Of course I still don't know exactly how much the cheque is for.

Moan over.

In other news, that Wikipedia entry on Escape Magazine is coming on strong. Needs a bit of tidying up but someone else can do that. How about you?

I generally leave my window open because it gets a little warm in this attic room in the summer and I smoke while I work. If I'm in nocturnal mode, like at the moment, I tend to get visited by bugs and moths which is mildly irritating but actually not that big a deal. To be honest most of them don't seem to make it this far up, or they get distracted by the much brighter lights of the factory over the way.

Tonight, as I was hacking away at that Wikipedia entry, a wasp buzzed by the monitor. I ignored it but it seemed pretty persistant. So I got up to kill it. (Wasps can be killed with impunity, I feel. Bees are another matter, but wasps, they can die.) I noticed it had a friend. And another friend. Then I noticed the florescent light had loads of wasps trapped in it. I'd been invaded.

Here's a question - if you kill 13 wasps in the space of 10 minutes and then have to keep your window shut to prevent any more from getting in, does that imply there's a nest nearby? God, I hope not...

I live in a flat. Other than its slightly odd layout it's a pretty normal flat with a kitchen, living room, bathroom and three bedrooms all coming off a corridor of sorts. There are no internal locks and the flat functions as a household like any others.

For some reason it's listed on a number of databases as three flats in one building, Flat A, Flat B and Flat C. Other than getting three times more "The Occupier" junk mail it doesn't cause any major problems. Except, that is, with regards to the TV License.

AndyZoop has a TV license because he watches TV. Because there are no internal locks on our bedroom doors this is sufficient for the whole property. However the TV Licensing people are under the impression that there are two homes, Flat B and Flat C, that are, shock horror, without a TV license.

And so every so often a couple of letters pop through the door addressed to The Present Occupier of B and C, written in the strongest of strong language that we will be visited by officers who will "interview you under caution" and that if found guilty "you could receive a maximum fie of £1000 and your name will be added to our National Enforcement Database" (whatever that is).

We're supposed to call them on 0870 240 3210 to "avoid an appearance in court before a magistrate", except the last time I checked 0870 was not a freephone prefix. So we haven't. And having gone through this rigmarole a number of times in different properties with no TV I'm not inclined to do so.

It's not that we already have a TV License legally covering the whole property that bugs me, nor that the address for this flat is listed incorrectly. It's the manner in which these letters are written that pisses me off. Having a television is a choice and part of that choice is the requirement to buy a license. When you don't have a television you haven't opted out or made a choice - you simply don't have a television. There shouldn't be a requirement to be registered for something you never even wanted to be involved with.

You also need a license to own a firearm but I don't think anyone ever gets threatening letters from the firearms licensing authority demanding that they prove their lack of a gun.

There's a guilty until proven innocent thing going on here. Yes, we could write to them explaining the situation and inviting them round to check we're not lying, but why should we? Especially when they're treating us like criminals from the get go.

(And another thing - how do TV detector vans work exactly? Because in my experience they don't work very well. Could the system simply be a list of properties that don't have a license which are they badgered until they prove they don't need one?)

Right, after all that excitement I'm off to Oxford for the weekend for Caption and comicky goodness with beer. The weather is notoriously good for Caption - only one year in ten does it rain - and the forecast is promising.

Please, Birmingham, try not to get attacked by Godzilla or some shit while I'm away.

So I popped over to Moseley for a couple of pints, because I can and the novelty has not worn off yet, and found myself in the beer "garden" (technically a large concrete patio) of the Prince of Wales pub. Company was good, including Nick, a bomb disposal chappy (he laughed at the phrase 'expert' though what else do you call them?) who used to be in the band Pram, amongst others and an enjoyable period of time occurred.

Of particular note, however, was that I felt cold. I'd had the good sense to wear long trousers for the first time in a week but neglected to bring my hoodie so my arms started getting goosebumps and my fingers verged on numbness. And it was very nice. It looks like the heat-wave will regroup and attack again over the next few days but for a few hours all is back to normal and I can feel my brain, which has been in a stupefied deadlock all week, starting to spring back to life, like frozen vegetables suddenly plunged into boiling water, only backwards.

I try not to moan about the heat too much because it's so very boring to do so, but a SE-facing attic room with one window and a shedload of computer equipment does tend to get somewhat warm. I wonder if, come October, I'll be feeling the cold in quite the same way... Whatever, I now have an objective for next year - to buy a wireless laptop which I can use in those pockets of the flat that aren't quite so bloody hot. Fifty quid a month should do it.

And so it was off to the Edgbaston cricket ground (which while very close, isn't actually in Edgbaston), home of Warwickshire County Cricket Club (except Warwickshire really starts a significant number of miles south), for my first even major sporting event, watching the Warwickshire "Bears" play the game of cricket against the Worcestershire "Royals". My gang for this trip were Jez, who know all about the game and gives a shit, Matthew, who also knows all about the game and gives a shit, Matt, who, being American, knows all about baseball and is intrigued about cricket in a way only expats can be, and The Bean, who being five years old was being indoctrinated into this strange world of sitting in the rain watching tiny men move a ball around a field by his father.

I knew jack-shit about cricket and could not care less. At best I was expecting a few hours sitting in the evening sun drinking beer with my friends. As the clouds covered I was praying for rain so we could all go somewhere less full of fat men who like sport (a paradox that never ceases to surprise me).

Entering the arena my ears were greeted by very loud and incredibly cheezy music, which was something of a shock. I was expecting something out of a Powell and Pressburger film, something more bucolic, as Jez suggested as I struggled for the word. This was all kinda hyper.

Suddenly at 5.30 the teams were on, and they were playing, really fast, and not wearing white. Turns out this was a Twenty20 game, part of a wider tournament, wherein the teams have just 20 overs each to score as much as possible, and which has to be completed within three hours (I think). After each score of 4 or 6, and whenever someone is out, the veryloudspeaker blasts out a 10 second clip of some corny but apt popular music tune. And play moves very quickly.

Apparently this is a cynical move by the cricket gods to get the general public interested in the game. The long, tedious matches still take place but these are the ones that bring the cash in. Matthew told me the players don't really take them as seriously, treating them as an enjoyable knockabout, and the stakes aren't so high. Meanwhile the public get a short but intense burst of cricket without having to invest a week or utter tedium.

I have to say I really enjoyed it. As the balls crossed the boundaries I was punching my firsts in the air and singing along. Towards the end it actually got a little tense and as the rain moved from the steady drizzle to actual rain I felt no desire to leave. Maybe the three pints of overpriced sickly-sweet lager helped, I dunno. Plus you could smoke on the stands, which I wasn't expecting, and that helped. I also understood everything that was going on, partly I suspect because they weren't invoking any complicated rules, just bashing ahead with the next bowl, the next over.

I don't think I'll be making a regular thing of this, but heavens! Cricket is not shit! Who'd've thought it!

(Here's a match report which I read thinking "ah, so that's what was going on!" while still not really understanding it.)

Cycling home from the pub at 11.30pm wearing just shorts and a t-shirt, even in a heatwave, is rather chilly.

In other news I met Maria, the secret fifth member of Fuzzbox. Some downloading will now occur.

Given the news earlier in the day the only thing to do was to go to the pub with people, which I did and it was good, though halfway through the night I realised that Mark S, who has no internet connection at all, might not have heard so I texted him and he hadn't so I went outside and phoned him and it was hard. I ruined his Saturday night but he was grateful.

But big thanks to Andy G, Alex, Cali, Lewis, Lewis' mum and other-guy whose name I've forgotten for accompanying this guy who was lurching between being very chatty and somewhat closed off all night. I kinda needed to be both at the same time.

And then home to countless blog posts and mailing list emails spoiling Dr Who which is currently BitTorrenting at a predicted 25 hours. Oh, if only I knew how to program the video recorder. It's all a bit too old school for me...

I've solved the "living with two guys called Andy" problem. From now on, the flatmate previously known as Dr Andy will be known as Dr Zoop, named after his art project which may well make it online one day. Meanwhile, and since pigeonholing by career is a bad thing, the flatmate previously known as Bookshop Andy will be known as Andy or, should clarification be needed, Andy G. All the other Andy's in my life remain as they were.

In related news, both Andys are in a band called Plinth who have their first gig on August 4th at Bar Academy should you, like, want to come along or something.

I seem to be doing things of little real consequence but that are adding up to a greater whole. You can probably chalk a lot of this down to the novelty of a new environment plus the acclimatisation to being a self employed sacker for nearly two months, but those little things, they do so please me.

Got up today at a civilized 10am. Popped down to the bakery (I live 30 seconds from a real bakery! It's next to the real butchers! (no greengrocer though...)) and bought a loaf of fresh bread. Did some work for a bit with plenty of tea before popping out on the bike to buy a fan (the downside to living in the attic - it gets a bit warm...). Some more work and then a 90 minute distraction in the form of the final episode of Lost via the lovely BitTorrent protocol, which was triffic. Yeah, no conclusive ending but at least two, count 'em, major cliffhangers - one was expected, the other was not - and a shedload of minor ones, as expected. Can't wait for the rest of the UK to develop their own love-hate relationship with this program.

That over I had a quite long phone call with Her Majesties Revenue and Customs to register myself as self employed which was all very painless. In fact it was kinda fun. The guy at the end of the phone was really keen and helpful and made sure I understood everything. He's even signed me up for a free training course. In my limited experience the Tax Office folks have always been helpful but there's something about being a business that gets them all excited, like you're doing something important for the good of the national economy. Which is kinda amusing as I'm doing this so I don't have to get a proper job. At least I think that's why I'm doing it. I guess I haven't fully acclimatised after all.

Then dinner during which Jez phoned to request help with a sofabed they'd just had delivered which needed to be lugged to the attic. Since I was also due to pop to the pub in Moseley with Matt and Marv it seemed sensible to combine the two. So a 20 minute bike ride later I was hufting up the stairs of chez Higgins before strolling over to the Bull's Head for the fortnightly Bohemian Jukebox event - basically an singer-songwriter open mike night only it's curated by Ben Calvert. Quality is variable and sometimes quite high indeed but it's a nice and informal way to check out local music such as Waldo Jeffers who were fun even if they did sound like The Smiths. Good Bongo action too.

And then, after being called "Keith" by Marv's friend Natasha (at least I think that was her name), a nice ride home in the dark to be greeted by the final episode of Alias which was also triffic in its battier than batshit way. This now leaves me with Doctor Who as my only TV-related fix, which is no bad thing. My inner geek could do with some down time.

And so to bed. If all my days can be the lovely I'll be a happy man.

Around lunchtime today I wandered down the two flights of stairs from my "office" to the "canteen" and stuck some eggs to boil on the hob. Normally I'd set the alarm on my mobile, go back to work and come down when they're done, but since the kitchen is such a distinctly detached part of the flat it felt like a refuge, especially as I had none of my usual entertainment gubbins in there - no music, no books, no comics, no computer. Just a crappy alarm-clock-radio. So I tuned it to Radio 4 and listened to The Archers for the first time in, ooh, 18 months? In fact it was the first time I'd listened to Radio 4 live in ages - there was never any point when I could pick and choose through the listen again thingy. As I sat there, drinking my tea while my eggs boiled and Joe Grundy moaned about something unintelligible, it all felt very civilised.

I also caught the news, and as you'll know a significant chunk of the BBC was on strike today. What struck me was how balanced the reporting was. Not really surprising given that those making the news were reporting their own situation, but quite different to how industrial disputes are usually covered. Whenever there's a transport-related strike much is said about potential disruption and the measures being taken to minimize it but very little is said about why the strike has been called. And if it is revealed that it's all about pay and working conditions nothing is said about the fact that that's the only thing unions are allowed to strike about (I could be wrong about this - if you know better please leave a comment).

I remember during my time in London seeing signs outside tube stations by the management apologizing but not taking responsibility for the strike, implicitly putting all the blame on the staff for making our journey to work more interesting. It would have been nice to see a notice in the same spirit as this Q&A on the BBC News site. Since London Underground passengers effectively pay the wages of those striking it would be the honorable thing to give them the whole story. I guess that's the difference between the public service mindset and the private corporate way.

(Of course it could be that the BBC wasn't actually able to gather any other in-depth news today so they were forced to pad things out with what was going on on their doorstep.)

See also Martin Currybet on why he was on strike.

I have moved, and it was quite painless. Lots of people helped which made it quite embarrassing as on Sunday we had everything out of the van in about 15 minutes, but if they hadn't have been there it would have taken a good hour or so. Thank you, you kind folk. All my stuff fits into my new room and it's not as cramped as I feared, striking a nice balance between airy and cluttered, and there are lots of beams that I have a strong desire to hang things from though I'm not sure exactly what yet.

The cable blokes came this morning and installed t'internet in about five minutes and it works, though for some reason I can't network Andy's Mac into the loop. The mass of cables and flashing plastic boxes behind my desk is quite impressive. Eleven things are plugged into the mains back there...

The layout of the flat is taking some getting used to. The kitchen in on the ground floor with the living room and bathroom on the 1st floor and my room in the attic. In the last house I had my computer and bookshelves set up in the living room next to the kitchen so everything was accessible. Now my work area is two flights away from the food area and the graphic novels are in the middle. It all feels very... modular.

I'm getting that urge to buy lots of new things for my new living arrangement - things I don't necessarily need and can't necessarily afford. I even contemplated redecorating. This will pass as I adjust to and gently tweak what is already here.

On thing that is already here is a drum kit. I used to play the drums back in my school days and have occasionally pondered going back to them but it's a tricky instrument to dabble in. And now here's a drum kit. Just sitting there. Hmm...

To my right is a rather disconcerting pile of boxes and disassembled furniture (one desk, one bookshelf, one futon) which I keep looking at whilst trying to visualize the size of a van the dimensions of which I am not aware of. The size of this pile is not helped by the massive online 6-months-of-non-perishables grocery shop I did a few days before hearing about the availability of the new place. Despite my best efforts I have failed to consume 20kg of pasta, 30 jars of peanut butter and 50 tins of beans in the last month. That said, I'm sure my new housemates will be delighted with the 36 rolls of toilet paper I'm bringing with me.

Tomorrow we move Andy in. On Sunday we move me in. On Monday broadband should be connected. See you then!

Next weekend is moving weekend. On Saturday we're moving Andy's stuff into the flat and then on Sunday we're moving my stuff. We've probably got enough help but the more would certainly make for the merrier. If you're up for helping carry a not insubstantial number of boxes of books and music up a couple of flights of stairs, or just to make tea and make useful and pertinent comments, and you can be in the Bournville area on Saturday and/or Sunday afternoon (exact times to be confirmed) then you're more than welcome to come along. Tea will be provided, naturally, and probably biscuits too. We might even slip some beer past the Bournville guards. (That joke is going to get tired quickly so make the most of it.)

I've been cycling for a little over six months now and feel somewhat inspired to write about it. Specifically about cycling in North Birmingham. When I bought my first bike last October and started cycling in a city for the first time in fifteen years I was a little cautious, especially in Birmingham which is the UK's motor city. Everyone drives here, doubly so in the more industrial north. There are no real cycle lanes to speak of other than a few token gestures from the council which are of no use to anyone so I'm sharing the roads with cars, lorries and a shocking number of white vans. I figured I was going to more at risk than most so I plastered myself in hi-viz reflective clothing and put my life in their hands. Still, if I did die at least I'd saved a lot of bus fare money.

As it turns out I've had exactly one near miss and that was my fault for dawdling on a roundabout. More to the point, the van that "nearly missed" me merely slowed down and honked at me repeatedly. I wasn't exactly in danger - just being an annoyance. Other than that, nothing. And it's not like I've been avoiding the main roads. It's just main roads up here. Not having anything to compare it to I figured I was just riding sensibly (I used to ride a motorbike and had defensive riding pummeled into me by other bikers) and being very visible.

I was therefore somewhat surprised when I read this post on Honeypears' LJ where Heather reckons that her florescent jacket had made her more of a target in Glasgow, and double so when Jeremy commented that she wears a minimum of reflective clothing when cycling in Oxford. Glasgow I imagine is kinda like Birmingham though I don't know for sure, but Oxford is cycling central. That said, I remembered Jeremy and Damian (another Oxford cyclist) telling me horror stories about biking around there, describing it as some kind of war zone. And cycling in London really is a war zone of mythic proportions. But north Birmingham is nothing like that. I wonder why?

The first theory is that there are quite a number of blokes around here who wear hi-viz jackets. Being an industrial area the hi-viz is pretty much the uniform for someone who has a physical, sometimes dangerous job. When you see a bright yellow jacket it's likely to be on some hard-nut geezer who would twat you if you looked at him funny. And because these chaps tend to live in this area as well as work here, folk treat them with some respect. Not because they're likely to twat them but because they do important jobs like refuse collection and roadworks and there's an awareness here of what that involves. I get treated much better in shops when I'm wearing a hi-viz. I don't think that'd happen in, say, Winchester.

The other theory is that there just aren't any other cyclists around here. I tend to ride very fast and I'm always surprised when I overtake another rider. I can do a ten mile trip and not see another bike. If I'm not the only one locking up at Tescos it's something of a shock. So when cars and trucks see me on the road it's something they don't see everyday so they take extra precautions. In a cycle-heavy city like Oxford all the drivers are used to bikes and have built up prejudices against them, but here they've got nothing to go on. Add this to the notion that I might well be a hard-nut and they keep out of my way, giving me some respect even.

It'll be interesting to see whether this still applies in south Birmingham which is more studenty, less industrial and more libera-middle class, yet still has a lot of cars.

(Having thought about this for ages I was prompted to write it after reading Currybet's piece on buying a bike which while not relevant does have a very funny Kraftwerk joke)

I just this morning went to the Apple Store in the Bull Ring for the first time. I had a couple of Apple related questions and thought I'd give them a go before going to the trusty Apple reseller in the shitty shopping arcade who have been looking after Mac-types since like forever, the theory being that the Apple store, being a wing of Apple's marketing division, wouldn't be much use to me as I wasn't in the market to buy new product and Apple is all about new product.

I wanted to know how best to hardwire network a four year old G4 tower and a much older CRT G3 iMac with a broadband connection and Airport basestation (just in case someone with a wifi laptop comes to visit). After the debacle when I last bought a router I wanted a nice simple solution that worked.

And they knew. Not only that but they could sell me the kit for a mere £20.00 with a 14 day return if it didn't work.

The buggers.

So I tried my next question, which was something of a trick question as I knew the answer. Sam's laptop, which she got from work, died big time and is being replaced. Problem is her iPod is registered to it and, thanks to Apple caving into the record companies, all her music cannot be transfered off with ease. Acting all naive I asked whether there was a way around this. The Apple guy said there wasn't but that there were plenty of "third party" programs and methods for doing so and while he couldn't tell me what they were off the top of his head he was sure Google would.

I was really wanting them to be annoying soul-less smile machines following the head office line but they came over all bookseller-like and helpful.

The gits. The absolute gits.

Yesterday I was finding it a little hard to get going so I figured I'd finally mow the lawn, since the grass wasn't damp and I could hear many lawn mowers buzzing in the area, before settling down to the computer. It took five hours.

Late last night I realised to my horror I'd run out of tobacco and that the shops had closed, but no worries, Tescos is open 24 hours so once the pubs had kicked out and the likelihood of being jumped by drunks was reduced I bombed down there on the bike. The 1am air had that warm smell to it and having bundled myself up expecting a wee nip in the air I was sweating. Along the way I spotted straggles of inedbriated youths with their shirts off.

To my horror Tescos close their tobacco counter at 10pm when the stop selling booze which seems really odd since there aren't any legal restrictions on when you can sell fags. Maybe it's a preventative measure to stop drunks who ran out of smokes in the pub bundling in there but it was very annoying. Thankfully I remembered a bizarro pack of slightly perfumed and very thin Italian fags Sam had left over from when she smoked so I wasn't completely stuck.

And so today I'm sitting with the patio doors open, a nice warm breeze is floating through the house and the birds are singing. This will all be shattered when the ice cream van makes its rounds but right now it's quite idylic.

Truly we are out of big coat weather.

(Of course it'll probably snow next week...)

So I went and I saw the room and the room was larger than I was led to believe, large enough to fit my double-futon-bed-sofa thing and my computer desk and given that it's a kind of L-shaped attic thing I'll be able to treat one end as an office and the other as a, well, bed space.

Which means I'll be moving to Bournville within the next month. I'll be living with two Andy's who I shall refer to as Dr Andy, as he's a PHD-type, and Bookseller Andy, as he's a bookseller. Yes, that'll be this Andy.

In the next three or so weeks I need to complete any outstanding webwork as I might possibly be internetless for a little while, sell a bunch of things on eBay (not so much storage space at the new place what with three book hoarders living there) and start packing.

Actual stuff is being shifted on the 21st (Bookseller Andy has hired a van already) and my last day in Kingstanding will either be then or a week later.

Yay!

Do you remember when I wrote about the New Years Eve party at that flat in Bournville? Well, it turns out there's a spare room there and today I'm going along to see it. Thing is, it's apparently not a very big room, long-ish but not wide enough for a double bed, and while there is quite a large living room it's already full of stuff (including a drum kit) and not suitable for a significant amount of computering things. So, as a flat it's already not ideal. And yet I'm still interested. This post is an effort to articulate why I'm interested so when I come to judge whether I can physically fit my stuff in there I can balance it against the less practical, more emotional reasoning.

As you'll know, I'm not particularly happy living in Kingstanding. It's not just tedious suburbia - it's a chav-infested simmering boil of narrow-minded bigotry and crushed souls. No, really, it is. It's not just the sort of place teenagers dream of escaping from - its the sort of place teenagers never escape from because there is no capacity for dreaming. And I've been living here for, ooh, 19 months now, the longest I've lived anywhere since 1995. As I've said before, the actual house I'm living in is fine - nice and spacious, well heated, big garden, all that, and my housemate Sam is triffic (I don't know how she deals with living here although thinking about it she's out most of the time) but the surrounding area sucks at my soul every time I walk to the shop or get a bus the hell out of here.

Then there's the social aspect. Other than Sam and her mum off in Aldridge I know exactly one other person in north Birmingham and Phil lives a bit too far to cycle to and off my bus route, plus he works in the city centre so it makes more sense to see him there. Despite not having had a massive social life these last 19 months I do know rather a lot of people in Birmingham (thanks to having been to Uni and worked in the bookshops here from 1995 to 2000) and all of them, except Phil, live south of the centre. Most of them haven't even heard of Kingstanding.

This wasn't a major problem when I first moved here. To be honest, after the madness of London and the tranquility of the farm I wanted to just chill for a bit with no distractions and since I was on a budget not being easily tempted to go for a drink or whatnot was a bonus. But I'm getting incredibly itchy feet.

I also need to bounce of other people. I'm lucky in that the people I know, and the people they know, tend to be interesting and creative people, but I don't see them that often. I've said a few times to people that, if I'm going to be working at the computer a lot I could really do with working in some kind of studio or something with like-minded folk. The main reason I've occasionally thought about returning to bookselling is that booksellers are nice people to work with and I really want to be around nice people who actually have something to say.

When I went out to Andy's birthday drinks last Saturday I was acutely aware that the booksellers and musicians in attendance, most of whom I knew, were my kind of people but that, despite living in the same city, I was merely visiting. When I left to get the last bus back home, not having anyone to share a cab with and not wanting to sleep of yet another sofabed after a week away, it really hit me that there was this whole scene going on that I was socially inches away from but at least an hour away from by public transport, and that this was a bad thing. As another example, when delivering leaflets in Moseley I bumped into people I knew and the friend of a reader of this blog spotted me. Again, I was visiting but it felt like home, or that it should be home. That wouldn't have happened in Kingstanding.

Now, Bournville isn't perfect - In fact current tenant Andy did ask me if I really wanted to live in Bournville - but it's a major step in the right direction. Walkable to Selly Oak, cyclable to Moseley / Kings Heath and there's a canal towpath right into town. Most importantly nearly every Birmingham resident I know is within a three mile radius or less. Also, the flat is as cheap as I'm paying at the moment (a major stumbling block with moving to Moseley) and, above all, I'd be living with interesting people. Unfortunately they're both called Andy G but one's taller than the other. And yes, Bournville is shockingly quiet and reserved but one thing I do like about suburbia is the relative quiet. I'm not sure I could deal with noisy neighbors in three directions in some thin-walled flat on the main road.

It's easy when you're in a situation you don't particularly like, to get hopelessly optimistic dreams about how fucking wonderful it'd be to be out of that situation, but I do think this flat would be good for me. If it wasn't for the size of the room it'd be perfect, but I've lived in tiny rooms before and it's not so bad. Just a question of organisation and rationalisation.

Okay. That's that all figured out. Now to see this room...

Well, I'm at home for the next couple of weeks and while I'm not bored there's not much to write about. I appear to be fairly gainfully self employed in the website design lark, at least for a bit, and while that's great it doesn't exactly make for good weblog fodder. I could write about my trials with the crontab or describe some neat CSS tricks or Movable Type hacks but to be honest after working on them the last thing I want to do is write about them.

And I think I've exhausted the postage potential of tea.

I could write about the election, I suppose...

Or not...

So...

Um...

Maybe I should have a look around and rip someone off see what kind of subjects other people blog about?

Any ideas?

I'm having a number of deliveries at the moment, all from different companies with different systems for dealing with the fact that I wasn't in last week. The teapot came via good ol' normal post which meant the postman left it in the gas metre cupboard by the front door. An Amazon delivery was attempted by a company called Parcelnet but failed, leaving a local Birmingham number for me to call "Andrea" on. I did so on Saturday and the conversation went something like this:

'lo
Hello. I've got an Amazon delivery that I'd like...
What's the address?
xx Milburn...
You in Monday?
Yes, that'd be...
'kay, Bye
*click*

I also have a potential delivery via FedEx though I have no idea what it is - probably something I ordered from the US a couple of months ago and forgot about. Their automated robot creature told me they were closed and when I pressed some buttons to find out when they were open they cut me off. I phoned again this morning and sat through a few menu and entered my tracking number (which told me exactly what was written on the card in front of me) before being allowed to talk to someone who authenticated my identity and said they'd pass my request for a Tuesday AM delivery on to the depot, which isn't quite the same as saying it'll be delivered on Tuesday AM but at least she was honest about it.

FedEx are a big company with, I assume, a streamlined centralised system of internal communication with rigid procedures and no real surprises. They also have nice uniforms and a branded fleet of vehicles. Parcelnet, on the other hand, employ mothers with large cars. I know this because I worked at one of their depots for a few days. Deliveries for the local area are split up by postcode and in the morning a bunch of normal looking people arrive in their normal looking cars and pick them up. I imagine they're parents with kids in school looking to earn a bit of part time cash. Drop the kids off, pick up the parcels, deliver them, pick the kids up.

In this age when everything seems to be branded and uniformed in corporate, it seems a little strange that one of the largest home delivery companies would have such a rag-tag army of untrained couriers, but I think it's a better system. While with FedEx my parcel is sitting in some anonymous warehouse being shuffled around by employees who don't really give a shit about it and to sort anything out regarding it I have to call some massive call centre and deal with someone who is physically miles away from my parcel, with Parceline I call Andrea at home and she's got my parcel in the boot of her SUV. And she has the sole responsibility for getting it to me, which means she will. This also means there aren't even more large vans driving around with three or four boxes rattling around in the back, which can only be a good thing.

Of course, none of these things have actually arrived yet. I'm stuck in that zone where I dare not leave the living room to shower in case I miss the door being knocked...

[Update - 2.30pm: Naturally, the FedEx parcel turned up a day early (it's a cap) while there's been no sign of Andrea...]

The teapot hunt has come up trumps, as you can plainly see. Thanks to a tip from Tom to try eBay I'm now the proud owner of a giant industrial seven pint capacity teapot, which alone is a quite marvelous thing but last night Helga, over from Dutchland for Andy's birthday, presented me with a tea candle powered teapot warmer which is just the right size and solidity to support my huge new baby. And so this morning I've drunk more cups of tea than I can count with a mere single visit to the kitchen.

You see, this is what the blogging revolution is all about. Thanks guys!

Had a teeny bit of trouble getting online Tuesday and, despite it only being a teeny bit of trouble, decided to take the week off computers, which is a good thing to do and should be done more often. I kept records though.

Day Two

Steps walked: 33,424
Hours actually walking: Six and a half.
Blisters: Yesterday's blister got a little worse and grew to the big toe region. Not too much pain though.
Ankles: Again, pretty okay.
Leg muscles: Nothing major to report.
Progress: Despite a shorter day I'm still at least half a day ahead, if not more.

Day Three

Steps walked: 35,614
Hours actually walking: Eight and a half.
Blisters: Dried out nicely and no pain, but a potential new one appearing on the heel.
Ankles: Fine until the final walk home.
Leg muscles: Rocking with Jesus.
Progress: Long day today, clearing most of Wake Green and the bit of Kings Heath that comes under my area. I'm now over a day ahead.

Day Four

Steps walked: 32,731
Hours actually walking: Five and a half.
Blisters: Nothing to report
Ankles: Quite bad pain in the morning, hence a much shorter day.
Leg muscles: Sore, but in a tired way.
Progress: I could, if I pushed myself, have nearly finished today, but I was a little too tired so took a shorter day. Also, I had to walk the dog...
Dogs Walked: One. My first walking of a dog ever which was very slightly mildly traumatic despite Badger being perfectly well behaved and knowing exactly where he's going. Also, my first picking up of dog shit in the park which went horribly wrong as he went in the long grass and the bag broke covering my fingers in crap. (Fortunately Badger is a vegetarian so it didn't smell that bad). Thanks to my tedious snotty cold I had tissues on me and there was a pond in the park, but I didn't really want to roll a fag...
Bedtime stories read: One chapter. Was pushed to read two but we settled with playing with my mobile phone instead (kids love clamshells that light up). Book is Ten In A Bed by Allan Ahlberg. I was only really aware of his picture books but his early reader books are very good indeed.

Day Five

Steps walked: 32,103
Hours actually walking: Five and a half.
Blisters: What blisters?
Ankles: Some mild pain due, I think, to a drop in adrenaline as the end approached.
Leg muscles: See Ankles.
Progress: The final mop up, spread over the day in three chunks. This would be the perfect way to do the job - a couple of hours walking, then an hour resting. Unfortunately this would not have been possible on Day Three as I was delivering a long way from base camp and it was raining. Methinks a car would be perversely useful for this job.
Dogs Walked: One. But Badger was not the issue...
Five year olds taken to park with Dog: One. Now the Bean is a lovely little boy and we've become good friends these last couple of weeks but he's five and is starting to assert himself in the world, testing the boundaries. And I'm not his parent. Nor do I have any parenting skills or teaching experience. And like a wild animal, he can smell this. What was supposed to be a 20 minute jaunt to the park turned into an hour of coercion as he stopped to look at pieces of moss and leaves and climb on walls and then when we finally got to the park and fed the ducks, refusal to start going home. After some swinging on the swing and lots of explaining that I had to get back because I was going out, I bribed him by saying I wouldn't tell his mum how difficult he'd been and we started back, only he wanted to ride on my shoulders. I managed this for a few hundred yards (bearing in mind my body was rather tired from five days of walking) but he wanted more, so we agreed I'd carry him to the railway bridge and he'd walk the rest of the way, which, despite him using my head as a rocket ship control panel, turned out okay as we went at my pace. (Did I mention I've also got a medium-sized dog on a lead?) He later apologised and I grudgingly accepted his apology.

Totals

Steps walked: 173,241
Hours actually walking: Thirty Four.

Conclusions: As expected the crippling effects of walking on concrete faded with experience and my leg muscles are now at an optimum level of strength. The only problem comes with physical exhaustion, which is understandable. However, I was able to do the whole job in five consecutive days within EU regulatory limits on working hours. This was all done with a very snotty cold and tight chesty cough, the like of which would have made me take a day off were I working for someone other than myself. In other news, I need to buy a cap and a waterproof jacket that breathes. So, off to Millets again then.

There was mention of more Moseley leafleting in a few weeks. Yay!

This week I'm covering the same area and have decided to do it in the same order as before so I can see whether or not I'm getting better. So far I appear to be. I'm also wearing a cheapo Pedometre which, as the name implies, measures each step I take.

So, today then.

Steps walked: 39,369
Hours actually walking: Eight - five in the morning, three in the afternoon.
Blisters: One (on one of the few fleshy parts of my feet just under my big toe - I think a sock got scrunched there. Last time, with my boots rather than these new walking trainers, I had no blisters at all, just very sore ankles)
Ankles: Started quite sore but actually got better during the day before plumeting into pain in the last hour.
Leg muscles: A small amount of stiffness at lunch but nothing this evening.
Progress: I've covered the same distance in one day that I covered in 1.5 days before, but I am doing longer days. If I can keep up the longer days I should have finished the bulk by Thursday and have Friday to mop up, which would be nice.

While doing this job I'm staying at Nat and Jez's for the week which is good as I can put in longer days without the bus journey and can babysit while Jez is at some conference or something. It all balances out nice and nicely.

Bedtime stories read: Two chapters.
Concepts explained: 0.5. How do you explain "disolve" to a five year old? We kinda got there using a paint brush and a jar of water (not literally - it was bedtime after all) but I'm not comfortable with it. Will have a think tomorrow.

After killing my feet, and with another five days of potential feet death ahead of me, I bit the bullet and went shopping for new shoes. Which might not seem like a big deal to most of you but this was the first time, I think, that I'd gone to buy shoes from somewhere not an Army Surplus store or similar big-chunky-boot emporium for about fifteen years (excepting a brief dalliance with a pair of Converse trainers that we shall not speak of). The Army Surplus store exists for two reasons - firstly to serve those who genuinely want equipment that the Army has declared surplus to requirements, and secondly to serve those sort of people who really don't want to be dealing with the high street for their trouser, t-shirt and shoe needs. And they're usually way cheaper too. I come into the latter demographic. The prospect of buying clothes from a mainstream, high-street based retailer fills me with a horror like no other.

So I'm sitting on the 33 bus, completely unprepared for this adventure ahead of me which I'd been putting off so much that I only had an hour to complete it before the shops shut. I figure I'm looking for the sort of shop that sells shoes for walkers, ramblers and the like, but that isn't stupidly expensive. The name Millets rings a bell as somewhere sensible that men with beards go to for their bottle-green fleeces and I'm sure I'd seen one in Birmingham a few years ago but God only knows where. Probably in a shopping centre, since that's where shops tend to hang out these days. The main shopping streets seem to be dominated by employment agencies, eateries, banks and branches of JJB Sports, and no-one wants to go into a branch of JJB Sports if they can help it.

For the first time ever I find myself looking at the directory at the Bull Ring, searching for a name that might possibly be related to hardy outdoors type apparel but nothing is forthcoming. The same applies at the Pavilions and I'm starting to think I'm looking a little high-end, so I head to the low-rent Pallasades with a similar lack of joy. And so I do what any self-respecting person who's lost at sea in high street hell. I go to Waterstone's to look at the books.

While there I chat to Andy and mention my plight. Is there a Millets anywhere in town? Yes, there is, next to Smiths, along from the Tax Office. Another bookseller confirms this. It would appear the non-Army Surplus bookseller buys a fair bit of kit there, which makes sense. And so off I go, the assistant is nice and helpful and I emerge with a £30 pair of solid soled yet comfy trainers.

Go me!

Okay, I need to put everything down so I can move on. Let's see...

After writing last Thursday's entry I kinda crashed and took Friday off to let my legs recover, which made sense as I wasn't really able to walk, walking being kinda essential to the whole "walking around Moseley" part of the job, and not a problem as I had planned to take a day off in the middle. So on Saturday morning I was back in south Birmingham at Nat and Jez's where the leaflets were being stationed for me, Nat being the chairperson of Moseley in Bloom, and another day's marching began.

Thing is, it's not actually very interesting. You'd think it would be, walking down every street twice, going up to every door, all of which are as different as the people in them. But it's not. The deal is to get it done as quickly as possible as I'm on a flat rate, not an hourly one, so all my attention is directed to getting directly to the door, figuring out where the letterbox is and guessing whether it's going to be an easy slot-through or a two-handed struggle-bugger, and then judging the potential for cutting across boundaries to next door. I set myself breaks every hour or so and in-between it was just walking, walking, walking. No time to observe, let alone take photos.

Saturday I spent 10 hours out. Sunday I managed about six before my feet started to hurt. Whereas the thigh muscles were starting to bulk up and deal well with the work my ankles were wearing away and my Magnums, while great for general purpose stomping and the like, were not really designed for this kind of marathon. Looks like I'm going to have to get some decent trainers if I want to continue this line of work, which I think I do. At least I have some more lined up, but I digress.

Monday, what should be the final day, and I have a brainwave. I'm being held back by the pain. All I need to do is get through the pain and my legs will get used to the work and all will be fine. So painkillers it is. Dosed up on Paracetamol I put in another eight hours and by the end of it feel tired but unsurprisingly okay. There's an estate of flats and a long stretch of road to go but I'll mop them up on Tuesday. Monday night I get home and start to feel a little shakey, shivering and sweating. Not much sleep is had and I feel like I've got some kind of flu. Whether this has come from physical exhaustion, getting caught in the hail a few days previous, exposure to baby Harry's baby germs or a combination of all three and more, I don't know, but like the hero in a schlocky action flick I'm determined to see through the last reel.

Interestingly the actual walking is now not a problem and I do the last three hours with ease. It's when I stop that it all falls apart, and I've been stopped now for a couple of days, emptying my sinuses into mucus laden handkerchiefs while working on Brenda's site and crashing in front of season 2 of 24.

And on Monday I'm back in Moseley delivering another batch of leaflets. The weird thing is, it's worth it. What that says about my life I'm not really sure.

I know the meaning of the term "to hobble" for that is what I am mostly doing at the moment.

My current job is distributing leaflets. Unlike most of the non-computer based work I do this one is freelance, I guess, in that I'm doing it all self-employed like. For a nice lump of cash I will deliver one leaflet to every resident in the Moseley area. So far I've presented 2,000 of them with a nice shiny sheet of folded A4 paper telling them all about Moseley In Bloom. This has taken me two days and about 16 hours. At a rough guess based on an average walking speed of 4 miles per hour, allowing for breaks and the like, I've covered 50 miles so far which makes up a little over one third of the total area to cover.

I has become somewhat clear to me these last 48 hours that I have not been doing jobs involving too much physical exertion of late. 18 months ago, fresh off the farm, I was in relatively tip-top shape. Working on the bins or whatnot proved no problem for me. Now, while I'm still fairly fit, at least compared to most of my peers, I'm not the superman I was. Or, at least, I'm not able to walk 25 miles a day without some serious recovery time.

But I'm not moaning or nuffin, because I know it'll get better. I'm just out of practice, or at least my legs are out of practice. They need to mend and when they do they'll be more powerful that you can possibly imagine. But right now I'm hobbling.

When I started the job on Wednesday, all full of energy and bounding away, I marveled at how old people would take as long to walk down the street as I despite my covering three times the distance. Walking home from the bus stop, all cold and damp from being caught in the hail earlier, I watched helpless as normal people bounded across the road while I had to wait in the knowledge that it would take me longer than usual to cross. I'm all stiff and bandy legged, like a pensioner. (If you're wondering how I'm actually able to do the job, once I warm up the pain goes. It's just after sitting for a few minutes that the hobble kicks in.)

On the plus side I'm working in the fresh air and the more often than not sunshine and by the time it's all over I'll be fucking fit. So enough with the moaning. I'm hobbling off to bed.

Since giving up sugar I've discovered the joy of the tea pot. Previously the whole teaspoon stirring malarkey meant I had to do my preparation in the kitchen, but now I only have milk to add I'm able to transport it all to my desk thanks to the wonderfully chintzy crockery set I was gifted a while back. And it's all very odd using a teapot and milk jug more normally associated with old ladies and vicars.

Now I'm sort of hooked on the teapot thing I'm thinking of upgrading, not just because blue and white china doesn't quite fit my hardcore image but because this teapot only holds 2 and a bit mugs worth of tea. it also has a tendency to go cold even with my thinsulate-lined hat playing the role of an ersatz tea-cosey. And the act of pouring has a tendency to make Sam need the loo but there's not much I can do about that.

So I'm wanting a big tea pot. A really big one. I want one so much I even went into Habitat (who it appears have no web presence whatsoever) today and while they had cafetieres the size of rocket launchers their largest tea pot was not really that large. I know you're supposed to drink tea from a dainty teacup but again, that doesn't really fit my hardcore image. I'm also after one of those things that looks like an aromatherapy evaporator with a candle in it that you stick your teapot on to maintain a decent temperature, but I haven't really started looking and I'm sure it won't be too hard to find.

So if you come across a jumbo teapot that's not to expensive, do let me know.

Andy's already written about this but what the hell, it's good blogfodder.

I've been doing a lot of webwork this week and, as such, hadn't left the house other that to stock up with milk and fags at the Co-op, such is the curse of the home worker (vis the title of Dave's blog) so when Andy suggested a movie it seemed like a top idea, even if spending a couple of hours in a dark room isn't necessarily the best way of "getting out". Since I'd been working nights I suggested an early showing, say 11am, and given there are fuck all decent films out at the moment plumped for The Machinist, a dark and disturbing movie about sleep deprivation, guilt and the awfulness of existence staring an incredibly emaciated Christian Bale.

So we buy out tickets and wander into Screen 4 which while not the shitty living-room sized screen you sometimes get is certainly the place they put the odd and the arthouse at the Five Ways multiplex. Since it's an 11am showing it's just us an a few random blokes in their late 20s, early 30s (for a palace of dreams, the cinema can give a quite brutal shock of reality) and we settle in to suffer the adverts.

Which are all for kids stuff. Cereals, toys, hyper-hyper animations shouting out at my fragile brain in widescreen at top volume. It's most disconcerting. Andy wonders if we're in the wrong screen, but I reassure him - the film and the adverts/trailers are on different reels and at this time of the morning it's not out of the question that the underpaid teenager running the projector just got it wrong.

Then the trailers, which again are for every kids movie due out soon, from the kinda interesting (Willy Wonka, Robots) to the utterly shockingly awful, and it being Easter there are loads of them, and endless stream of wrongness considering what we're about to watch. The trailers end, the tedious Orange "advert" with that guy who isn't Kevin Spacey does its thing and the title card comes up.

Pooh's Heffalump Movie.

Turned out while all the computers in the system, from the national website to the ticketing tills, said The Machinist was showing, the typed out schedule for the staff had this sub-standard Pooh cash in listed so that's what they showed. And there's something beautifully absurd about this - how wrong can you get? You order a Bourbon and you get Sunny Delight.

It actually all worked out okay because we then had a couple of hours to waste before the next showing and there's nothing better than having to creatively fill time, plus it was a nice day and I really needed outside stuff, so we wandered around Brindley Place and the canals (some photos) and all was good before returning for our desired dose of misery and pain.

The Machinist is okay. Visually it's stunning but the actual plot seemed a little linear to me. The reveal at the end, while not obvious was a little 2+2=4 and it didn't seem to be trying to say anything interesting or deep. Maybe that was the point - that there isn't really anything to say about guilt other than how it eats you away. I dunno.

Currently listening to the incredibly cheesy and musically laxative-like UK Blogger's Disco Megamix which I'm now regretting not contributing to. Mike Troubled Diva put it together and I'm hosting part one. If you can help with parts two and three I'm sure he'd be happy to hear from you.

I appear to be really busy, though I can't quite identify where the busyness is. All I know is my usual distractions and procrastination devices are sitting there all unclicked at the end of the evening. It took me a whole week to watch the last torrented Alias episode and I only managed that in three chunks, which was quite odd as Alias is something you don't want to be trying to analyse too much, especially as sharks are being jumped left, right and centre this season. Not a problem - Alias is supposed to jump the shark on a regular basis - but you don't want to be thinking "what are they doing in Budapest?", "who is he trying to kill?" or just generally "what the hell is going on?" You just need to let the absurdity wash over you. When you start trying to figure it out it all just falls apart, I find.

The busyness seems, I think, to be the start of some kind of web design business, in that I've been getting a few emails asking questions about designing websites, some of which are even for cash. A couple of projects look to be really interesting, one being a portal that drags in various blogs, guestbooks and a Flickr account with the other being more a traditional business site with potentially long term development. Around these have been questions about how I did certain things on the site, which are fun to answer but do take up a surprising amount of time and I have to stop myself at a certain point with the line "More than that, I charge", which is a novelty. Unfortunately my initial explanations seem to be comprehensive enough that I don't need to charge. Must obfuscate more.

Today held the wonderfully odd experience of doing tech support from work. Step-bro Alastair, whose site I set up and look after (though thanks to the way I set it up I never actually have to look after it), was having problems with email and, since he retains me as his IT department, called me, resulting in 15 minutes standing in the corridor outside the warehouse trying to a) understand what was going on and when it dawned that I wasn't going to understand what was going on, b) log him into the webmail service, trying to remember passwords I'd set up a year ago and c) generally figure out how Outlook on Windows works, having never really used it. Once we'd concluded I couldn't really help without a computer in front of me I went back to checking coils for solder errors.

There's other little things, like the reseller hosting service I seem to have developed for cartoonists, musicians and film makers which doesn't take up much time at all but it's a thing, and word seems to be spreading that I can get an absurdly good deal on basic hosting (seasoned web-types will assume correctly I'm using 34sp but you'd be amazed at how many people are amazed at £35 for a domain + hosting. There are some real rip-off merchants out there...). Once I get to twelve domains I get a discount which will net me, um, not much at all as it happens, but it's good to be able to help folk, and it means I get free comics and the odd meal. And of course the potential that some of them might want to pay me to do their actual site.

The good news is I should soon have time to really address all of this stuff and start to get it sorted into some kind of, well, business I suppose. You can earn a fair chunk of cash delivering 10,000 leaflets to all of Moseley in a week. Fresh air, exercise, many photo opportunities and no need to temp for a little while. My solder checking days will soon be over!

[Report(s) from the Comix Thing are forthcoming, don't fret]

In other news, I decided to give up sugar in tea this weekend.

When I started drinking hot caffeinated drinks as a lad I, like many young persons, didn't really like the taste at all but having gotten hooked on the drug that fuels our nation I smothered it away with sweetness. Initially I just drank tea with three sugars and stayed away away from coffee which was disgusting. Then, when staying with my dad in Houston, I was unable to get hold of any tea whatsoever, the Americans being somewhat retarded in that department, so I was forced to drink coffee to get my fix. Coffee with six to eight sugars of course.

Having discovered this crack cocaine of beverages I was hooked and drank absurdly sweet coffee on a regular basis throughout my early 20s, saving less-absurdly sweet tea for calmer moments. After a few years it occurred to me multiple mugs of this treacle might not be the best of things and I cut out the coffee save for really bad hangover days. Over the last few years my sugar-in-tea dose has gradually gone down from 3 to 2.5 to 2 to 1.5 to 1 spoonful. Of late I've occasionally been drinking tea without any sugar at all, usually because there wasn't any in the places I've been working, and I've started to find that I actually like it, prefer it even. The taste is still a shock but I've come around to that bitterness as a virtue, plus it doesn't leave my mouth all sticky, which is nice. And so, this evening I made a cup of tea and, despite there being a jar of sugar sitting there right next to the bags, didn't put any in. And it was good.

Coffee, however, is still disgusting.

Back from my nice long weekend in London which turned out to be a great example of how to stay chilled by really taking your time. Despite a rather hectic yet thoroughly enjoyable Saturday I returned Monday afternoon feeling oddly refreshed. So much so that other than bunging some photos up on Flickr I haven't really felt bothered enough to write about it in depth. These things will surely follow though as my life returns to its usual pattern of long stretches of tedium (punctuated by random oddness, of course) so expect so expect long rambles soon.

In the meanwhile, you can entertain yourself with new Magsheet photos, a whole 14 of the buggers added to the set. They're all surprisingly great but these three I particularly like:

Took the day off today so I could get down to London nice and early but it seems I'm still in Birmingham when, according to my plan, I should be passing Reading about now. S'no biggy - I'll just be in London on time and I really needed the rest. That bloody job is so tiring considering it doesn't really involve any hard work. Back again next week...

It's all been getting quite tedious as I seem to be attracting the budding spouts of some web design work but I'm a bit too knackered to really address it properly, but until this work produces some actual cash I can't stop doing the temp job. Catch bloody 22.

I'm off down south for the UK Web And Mini Comix Thing, a convention/festival/mart for small press comics and the people who make and read them. I went to the first one last year and enjoyed it so much I'm managed to get wrangled into helping out this time by running the front door. So if you're going you'll have great difficulty avoiding me. I'll be wearing my spanking new [This Is Good] t-shirt and, if all goes to plan, will have shaved. If you're wandering around London in the (with any luck) sunshine and feel like a jaunt to Mile End, do pop in.

I'll then be bumbling around London for a couple of days. There are some people I've already assigned myself to see but if you have my mobile number and are fancying a quick cuppa on Sunday or Monday morning do give me a ring.

When did it suddenly become Spring? Yesterday I cycled to work in my usual three jumpers and arrived soaked to the skin in sweat. Riding home I didn't even wear gloves. Today the air has that slightly baked smell to it. I really must get a nice outdoors job if this is going to keep up (which of course it won't - we'll have some other form of random weather in a fortnight, and that's why we love this island so.)

Oh, and Podcast six is up a bit early because I won't be here on Sunday. And it works this time. I checked it. (Note to the wise - never upload an mp3 as AASCI - it don't like it.)

As I've no doubt mentioned before, having five years or archives just sitting there all indexed by Google and waiting for unsuspecting people to stumble upon it completely out of context does occasionally throw up moments of oddness. Usually it's a comment or email about something I wrote about three years ago. Today it was a phone call.

The mobile rings buzzes displaying "Withheld" which puts me on the defensive for a start. I answer it and a bloke asks me if I'm looking for a room in Birmingham. I mishear him and think he's asking if we have a room to rent, and say no. Oh, he says, it says on this internet site that you are. Nope, definitely not us. What's the site, I ask, since I'm sitting at the computer at the time. It's a page called "Looking for a room in Birmingham" and the address is peteashton dot...

It all clicks. In July 2003 I was, in fact, looking for a room in Birmingham and, since it had worked before, I'd mentioned it on the blog listing my phone number (now removed). This guy had searched Google with the phrase "looking for a room to let in birmingham" (I know this because I checked my referral logs) and there I was, result number 11. Neglecting to look at the date stamp in the sidebar he calls me up, seemingly under the impression that he's on an accommodation listing site or something.

Stuff like this makes me wonder if I should make the archive pages idiot-proof with a big explanation about the site and how old the post is. But then all the oddness might cease, and I'm not sure I want that.

I wonder, after he hung up, if the bloke then carried on looking around the site. I wonder if he's reading this...

I just saw this over on Jez's blog where he's quoted someone. They start off with "Thank G-d I'm not dependent..." and it got me thinking about people who self censor. Usually it's religious stuff or swearing, and I always find it odd. If you object to swearing that's fine, but J*s*s, if you're going to f***ing swear, then do it properly, you c**t. That's what I say. But then people are odd and that's the point of them really.

I have a nice long post planned for the weekend. Some wacky stuff happened at work this week and it's a good one, but it needs to digest a bit first and Friday should put it all into context.

One of the mailing lists I'm on got trolled this week, which was interesting as it rarely happens to places I hang out on. I was surprised that I was one of the first to cry "troll" while other were still giving the benefit of the doubt, not because the others were naive or stupid or anything - for a while I thought I might have been mistaken - but because despite having never been in a flame war or whatnot I was able to spot it for what it was. I guess my net-fu is stronger than I thought.

During a long oops-I-forgot-mothers-day-oh-you-weren't-in-anyway phone call with my mum I realised I'd forgotten how old I was. Turns out I'm 32, not 33.

Thanks to the MyBlogLog service which records how many times links on the main page of my site are actually clicked on (kind of a reverse stats thing), I've actually discovered some accurate information about my users. Of those who have broadband and download 50mb files of music, exactly half use the web site while the others use the RSS feed or LiveJournal. Which was nice to know.

Doctor Who is really good. I know it's a bad thing to download it before it's even been shown on telly, but I was never going to watch it that way anyway and will be torrenting the rest, so my conscience is clear.

Having introduced housemate Sam to Flickr she asked me how she could get notifications of comments posted to her pics and the like. Since this is done using RSS feeds I set her up with a Bloglines account using their handy system of mailing an invite from my account with a few of my feeds included. She was suitably impressed and maybe even converted to the system and I went back to my own Bloglines account since it's pretty much the centre of my webernet life.

The next evening I'm on my machine and Sam's on the sofa with her laptop. I ask how the Bloglines thing is working out and she moans that she's suddenly got loads of new feeds that she didn't subscribe to, presumably put there as "recommends" by the Bloglines people, and was currently deleting the things. That's odd, I think. They don't usually do that kind of "helpful" thing. So I popped over and had a look, only to be greeted by my bloody account, or rather my account less 10 or 15 feeds. After a major panic where I scribble down all the feeds still showing on my screen that aren't on hers before the browser refreshes, I figure it out.

A year or so back when I moved in here I didn't have my Mac so I borrowed her PC for a bit. The cookie Bloglines placed there was evidently still alive after all this time. But why wasn't there a new cookie for Sam's account? Evidently when she set up the account with the invite she didn't go through the usual logging in process hence no cookie, so when she booted up she got my account.

Two things. Firstly, I'm so used to logins expiring after a few hours that, other than for banking and other sensitive things, I tend not to bother to click the "log out" button. Bloglines obviously don't operate like this, which is great if you're always on the same machine but I've signed in on quite a few over the last couple of years... Secondly, the fact that a seasoned if non-techy user like Sam will automatically assume that a new service will spam her account with a hundred or so spurious "recommends" says something or other about web services.

It's not a big deal but I did have something of a near death experience regarding my online life. If that account vanishes for whatever reason I'll be completely lost. I've put considerable investment in a web-based startup that's just been bought by Ask Jeeves of all people. Time to investigate backup strategies methinks...

When I was a little kid, my mother told me not to drink water from the hot tap. The logic being that while the cold water in the kitchen came directly from the mains the hot water had been sitting in the tank in airing cupboard and wasn't exactly fresh. Good advice, especially to a kid who's thinking this whole hot water through a tap thing bypasses the need for a kettle when preparing warm blackcurrant juice.

And like many of the things you're told as a child, you never bother to question them until sometime in your adulthood. Regarding the hot water drinking thing this happened to me the other week. I was in a hurry and figured I'd clean my teeth while in the shower, something that had never occurred to me before. I remembered my mother's stark warning about letting hot tap water anywhere near my throat but figured as long as I didn't swallow or anything I'd be okay, plus we have a combi-boiler so the hot water is as fresh as the cold.

The thing is, when I did this I noticed my teeth were much cleaner than usual. Which makes sense when you think about it. Washing things in hot water is way more effective than in cold and with my tea and cig consumption rates I need as much cleaning power as I can get.

So the question is, does anyone else clean their teeth using the hot tap?

The snow has settled and it's still coming down, which is great and lovely but I have to cycle 5 miles or so to work.

Um...

Home again after five full days in baby land. It's good to be back in the quiet and calm, but it was a fun experience which I'd repeat with pleasure, though not for a little while. It's good to have this Uncle role, to be the part of the family that isn't doing the career/family thing and therefore is able to help out for significant chunks of time at the drop of a hat. It's something I intend to continue doing in the future.

I didn't take a whole heap of photos but the few I did are up on Flickr including this one:

I'd just fed Spike his bottle and in the process he fell asleep, as did I for a few seconds. It had been a long week for me and a long month for him.

Right, normal service will now resume. Whatever that is.

Okay, Thursday... What happened today... Um...

I'm not actually staying in the same house as the brood - due to somewhat experimental sleeping arrangements designed to try and maximise the hours and minutes spent asleep, Lucy, Jeff, Isobel and Spike were all sleeping in separate rooms which meant there was no space for me, so rather than sleep curled up in the kitchen I've been staying with friends of theirs down the street. These friends also have two small people, one of which is "not sleeping well", but because of the layout of the house (I'm in a box room in the attic) I'm not noticing the nocturnal screams too much. Plus I tend to be able to sleep though pretty much anything these days. A few years living over dual carriageways in central London will sort that for you.

That said, these friends tend to go to bed at 8-9pm so that they can maximise their sleeping before the toddler wakes up at midnight and 4am, so I'm getting to bed absurdly early too. Even though I'm intending to read and listen to music I'm dropping off about 10pm and usually waking up at four, five, six and seven. I'm probably getting loads of sleep, albeit in chunks, which is no bad thing, but I'm pretty bleary when I march up the road to start my day of a morning.

Today was effectively a half day - Spike had a hospital appointment in Oxford in the afternoon and Dad was to drive the three of them down there after lunch. I had a nice list of things to do but the morning seemed a little difficult to fill. I did take Isobel out for a walk in the park for a bit, which was fun. She goes off in quite random directions not paying notice to paths or flowerbeds and tending to move towards the least pretty parts of the park (which of course can be the most interesting). Not so many people out this morning for some reason but quite a few squirrels.

Then in the afternoon they all left and I started my jobs. It was like a fog had cleared. I emptied and cleaned the inside of the fridge and, boom, it was done. So I moved onto the hob and, boom, that was done too. No babies, no distractions. Before long I'd ticked all the things on the list and slacked off for a while, marveling at how different it seemed without the kids all over the place. Then they all came home in a pile of screams and tears. The journey had been uneventful thanks to them sleeping through most of it, but now they were suddenly awake and Isobel was not happy. But that only lasted a couple of hours.

One more day to go and then it's back to what passes for normality. Unless this is normality and I live in bizarro world normally? Who can say?

Okay third day, I think? Is it Wednesday?

It's strange - the day just seems to go by and you can't quite tell what happened but something must have because you're tired. Not much I can say about the phenomena that will add to the knowledge base but hey, I understand now. Not that I didn't understand before but I have experience of the weirdness that is a day with babies.

We did have an interesting morning today - a trip to the local play group at the church where many mothers and the odd dad brought their many children to mix in one room. This is apparently a good idea. For me it was a kind of hell with cherries on top. All these parents, either knackered from baby duty or horribly keen and eager - all nice people, don't get me wrong, but something about the situation made me not want to be there. Since I had to be there to keep an eye on Isobel (Lucy was busy with Spike) I decided my best role would be to stick close to her since she had a better knowledge of how these things worked than I. So I followed here around as she pushed her walker-thingy and we played with plastic food and stuff. Later we decamped to a box full of random toys and were attacked by a young girl of, god, I dunno, three? She was talking and could count and stuff. She kept picking up toys and giving them to me, which was cool, but then she picked up a house and gave me that, and then started putting animals and stuff in the house. What was weird was how comfortable she was with me - there was no stranger-danger or any of the analytical stares I usually get when first meeting a toddler. I was accepted as one of them, presumably because I had such great toy-box-fu or something.

Anyway, we escaped from play group in something of a daze (it was the first time in a while Lucy had been there and she hadn't quite acclimatised either) and after lunch I was starting to feel the effects. We managed to get the kids off to sleep eventually and I lay down on the sofa and promptly fell asleep. Only for 15 minutes or so before the door went with another visitor. The kids slept for ages though, which was cool. Later, while playing with Isobel, I discovered that beating up toys elicits laughs, especially causing grief to the bright orange giraffe.

And this, by the way, is as coherent as I get. I am enjoying it, though - don't get me wrong. It's just... blimey!

Okay, I'm in Banbury helping out. So far it's been okay. I was, well, let's say pretty darn worried about what it would be like and whether I would actually be any use at all, but this baby thing, while obviously hard work, isn't as frightening as I thought.

The basic job is to assist my sister, Lucy, who, if you've not been paying attention, had her second baby at Xmas and has been rather ill this last month. So this morning and I took both of them for a walk. I was expecting to take Isobel (16 months) but Spike (1 month) as well? Eek! But that turned out to be fine - Spike just slept most of the time and Isobel enjoyed stomping around in the mud. And while we were out Lucy had half an hour to herself which was essential. Other great adventures (and I appreciate this is going to get really dull so I'll stop soon) included changing a nappy for the first time in over a year (not as bad as I'd been led to believe, but then I've dealt with worse as a street cleaner) and mopping the floor. Isobel is generally an angel (so far) while Spike is suffering the trauma of just being alive.

If anything really interesting should happen I'll let you know but lest this turn into a baby blog...

Unless a baby blog would be cool for a week?

So Saturday night was my monthly drinking with the gang session which I was looking forward to having missed the last one due to the silly job and what with this, along with the occasional cinema trip with Andy, being pretty much my social life these days. Not so many of the chaps were there and it looked to be a fairly relaxed night, which was probably a good thing, but while at the bar I noticed a box of black cigar cases next to the spirits containing Absinth. Thinking this rather noteworthy I informed the table and John immediately went to check them out. Then, on buying a round later on, he returned with five tubes and handed them out. And then Phil went to the bar and returned with another five tubes. And then John repeated the exercise. And then it all went a little fuzzy. At about 10.30 I decided that in this state I really didn't want to be stumbling around Birmingham trying to find a minicab to get home so I gathered together my will power and headed for the bus. I must have gotten on one as I remember getting off it but not much else. The next day Phil phoned me asking what had happened as he'd blanked out in the pub and when he came round everyone had gone. I wasn't much help.

Anyway, so I'd woken up with something of a hangover and my phone beeped with an incoming text message from brother-in-law Jeff asking me to phone sister Lucy at our mother's house. Which sounded far too ominous to be dealing with in my state so I went back to sleep. When I finally rose Sam told me Lucy had called and could I ring her back. There was some kind of family crisis going on. I didn't really feel in the right state to deal with whatever it was but the longer I put it off the more I speculated on how bad it could be, so a cup of coffee later I picked up the phone.

It wasn't as bad as I thought. As you know, Lucy had a new baby over Xmas and Spike joins Isobel who is 16 months old. On top of this, Lucy developed Anemia after the birth so her tiredness levels were up. Last week coping with two babies on top of this had become an issue so she'd gone to stay with mum for a bit, but then mum started having coping issues too. A sensible long term plan had to be sorted, and quickly, or else everything was going to go to shit. Which is where I, the brother with far too much free time and no commitments, come into play.

Next week I'm going down to Banbury. They're essentially employing me as home help, doing the housework, shopping, feeding and entertaining Isobel and all the relatively minor jobs that tend to build up so that Lucy and Jeff can firstly recover from the last few weeks of hell and make some plans for dealing with this long term. Whether than long term involves me remains to be seen. I might take to this baby-stuff well, I might run screaming. But at the very least it'll be a change from the agency work and a chance to get to know my neice a bit better.

As you know, my sister had a baby over Xmas. Throughout the pregnancy he (and they knew the sex early on) was referred to as "Spike." When his sister Isobel was a fetus she was known as "Rambo" due, I think, to the kicking, but there was no chance of this name sticking once she was born. Spike, however, started to move from a joke to a potentially viable name. In the end they plumped for "Oliver Francis" but a little bird (ie mother) informed me second thoughts were being had. Sis and bro-in-law weren't that comfortable with the whole Oliver thing after all and kept referring to him as Spike, party out of habit but also because he didn't look like an Oliver, whatever an Oliver looks like. And so, rather that go down the "pedigree dog name" route like Jez and Daniel/The Bean (so much so I sometimes have to check his name actually is Daniel), they're going to register him as Spike this Friday.

And that, in this age of babies being given grandparent names, is kinda cool.

When I moved into this house last year the adjoining house next door was being renovated and thus not being lived in. While the constant drilling was a bit of a pain when I was working late shifts (or just sleeping all day) it was nice to think that there was no-one there we could piss off with our noise, not that we made any. In fact I often thought we should be playing music and watching movies louder purely because we could but then home is a refuge, and a shared refuge at that, so calm and serenity is the way forward.

A couple of months back next door was finally sold and my heart sunk as the potential awfulness of our new neighbours dawned on me. So far they've been okay but they do seem to be DIY nuts and the irony of this is not lost on me. The previous owners spent a good year completely re-doing the entire house and garden and now these new folk are tearing it all out. Obviously I can't judge what they're doing to the inside but just before Christmas they started on the garden, scorched earth style.

Unfortunately I didn't get a photo of the before, but for a Kingstanding garden it was pretty nice. The small lawn (still there) was followed by a small clump of tall-ish trees leading to a slightly overgrown but interesting end third with a corrugated iron shed and a potential vegetable growing area. It was an effective, interesting and quite peaceful use of these standard but quite substantial suburban plots.

And now it's all gone. They even had a mini-digger out there. And this huge fence has gone up on all sides. Not only that, but their neighbours on the other side have gotten into the act (possibly pooling the costs) cutting down all their again quite established trees and continuing the fortress-fencing theme.

This could of course go one of two ways. It could result in a nice inoffensive garden or it could go all Chav. I'll be keeping tabs and posting and development up on Flickr.

When I first worked in Birmingham as a bookseller from 1998-2000, three of my colleagues shared a flat in Bournville. Now, Bournville is a rather strange place. All areas of Birmingham have their own characteristics and quirks, especially in the south, but Bournville is like a nature reserve, only it's urban. There are no pubs, off-licenses or major commercial developments, gardens have to be kept tidy, none of the eyesores of modern life (satellite dishes, etc) are allowed and in order to live there you have to abide by strict rules of conduct. Thankfully within walking distance is skuzzy Stirchley which seems to make up for the absence of vice in Bournville itself, but it really is like arriving in some idyllic village in the middle of the Cotswalds. All very nice and yet at the same time all rather wrong.

But anyway, Andy, Andy and Dave moved into this flat on the edge of Bournville Green over one of the shops. The flat backed onto the Cadbury factory and had no immediate neighbours thus was the perfect venue for a party. And so, as 1998 drew to a close, a rather large number of our peers from the world of bookselling and elsewhere descended on sleepy Bournville for a nice cozy soiree that turned into something much much more.

My Christmas had an extra twist this year as my sister, Lucy, was forecast by her doctor to give birth on December 25th. There's a margin of error of two weeks so from mid December onwards the family was on alert, every text message quickly flipped open, ever phone call speedily answered. And because this is my sister, who is like me in ways that are diametrically opposed so if you picture my eccentricities and flip them in a metaphor mirror she'll take it very personally and not talk to you for a while, it wasn't just that she was going to have a baby. Oh no.

But I have a hangover and thinking hurts.

More, much much more, later...

All this email spam for Rolex watches is just so retro. They'll be spamming for 8-tracks next.

Had something of a the writers block this last week, which happens. Often. I did go see The Incredibles and recommend it to everybody for all the reasons you've already heard. Monologuing... Heh... And I got that fluey virus that just everybody who's anybody has been having of late which was kinda annoying because apathy, lack of motivation and a sniffle are just such unusual symptoms for me.

Agency work has been minimal - two days last week, one day this week - and it doesn't look like it's going to get better before the new year so I've taken the plunge and done a Hire Me page. I've got a couple of leads for some web design work and now I've got something to show them. This could prove rather effective as a week or so of web-work will garner the same cash as a month of temping and I'm sure, if it pans out, I'll look back and wonder why I didn't do it earlier. And then I'll remember the apathy and lack of motivation...

Anyway, let me know what you think of the page (by email rather than in the comments please).

When I wasn't virusing I bashed together Imagesmith, a little site for my mate Kath who's making a go of freelance photography. It was quite an interesting experience as she didn't like my original idea and I didn't like her idea and because she's a mate I told her so, but eventually we went with her idea, because it's her site, with a few of my ideas in the mix and I think it's worked out okay. The back-end was fun to play with, integrating Javascript rollovers with Movable Type. I'll maybe write it up later.

And also on the webmaster side I moved my mum's Yoga site over to a new domain because we'd been meaning to for a while but mainly due to her free OneTel webspace had become FTP-inaccessible for some reason OneTel can't figure out and the info thereon was getting out of date. The only problem is Google still loves the old site and despite indexing the new one hasn't ranked it so high. So if you have a weblog that Google likes and want to do my mum a favour...

It occurred to me tonight that this is my first proper Halloween for quite a while. Last year it fell on a Saturday and I was in the pub and previous to that I was living in areas where there aren't many families, and if there are they tend not to let their kids out after dark to go knocking on strangers front door. Currently I'm living in suburbia, real suburbia with families and everything. They do things differently here.

At about 7pm there's the first knock on the door. I open it to see three short people in masks wailing "trick or treat". Rather surprised I pop into the kitchen, realise we have nothing resembling candy, and drop some shrapnel from my pocket into their bags. Ten minutes later another knock on the door, another three short people in masks and the rest of my shrapnel has gone. Total outlay: about 67p. And it's kinda cute, bringing back memories of when I used to do this as a kid. But I now have no money (I doubt they'd change a tenner) and no sweets. I could give them some mini-comics but I suspect their parents wouldn't really approve so I'm a little stuck.

I pop up to Sam's room to inform her of my dilemma and am slightly taken aback by her hostile, somewhat Scrooge-like approach to the whole event. As the evening progresses I start to understand why as our door is knocked again and again. We don't answer, Sam on principle, me because I have nothing to placate these tiny demons and the implicit threat of a "trick" seems best dealt with by the illusion of absence rather than a pleading of poverty. Added to this the knocks are getting heavier, the murmuring voices deeper. These are not sweet little kids any more - these are the teenagers, the morally lost, socially dispossessed gits who hang outside the off license letting off fireworks.

I'm reminded again that I generally want nothing to do with the local community of Sun reading idiots and their cold-eyed offspring. I'm reminded that while my house is decent, my housemate cool and my rent cheap I really don't like living in this area, not so much that I feel the need to leave any time soon, just in the way that I feel I have nothing in common with the residents.

In other news the first absurd Christmas decorations went up on our street last week. Come December every other house will be plastered in the tackiest of tacky flashing lights and Sam and I will laugh, regaling each other with sightings of aesthetic atrocities. But the laughter disguises a fear that there is no irony here, no knowing winks. There's something else afoot, something I will never understand or comprehend.

I'm loading a pallet onto the shrink-wrapping machine and the radio news catches my ear. I turn to the guy in the booth. You what? "Some people are going to be pretty upset about this" he says. Yeah, me being one of them. As Teenage Kicks starts it's unexpected stint as most playlisted song of the day I find myself slightly stunned, unable to compute this information. He'll never broadcast again. I'll never hear his show live again. Kids discovering music now and in the future will not have his guiding voice. It's over and it's too early, far too early.

I continued my work in a daze, making little mistakes and bumping my pallet truck into things, as it sunk in. I sent a couple of text messages to people I guessed hadn't heard and got bemused replies. Is this a wind up? A little later some guy is singing raucously along to Teenage Kicks obviously oblivious to why it's being played. That phrase, "some people are going to be pretty upset about this" is flowing through my mind. I'm probably the only person in this warehouse who's affected by the news.

I can't remember when I first heard his show. It was probably around 1989. I was 17, had just discovered The Pixies and was making up for some seriously lost time music-wise. Up until then my music taste had been pretty terrible, growing up in Croydon and listening to Capital Radio. As I moved to Winchester Radio One moved to FM and became my chosen station. At the time he was playing music in trios. A guitar track, a dance track, a world track, a guitar track and so on. I loved the guitar stuff, hated the dance stuff and was bemused by the world stuff, but I stuck with it. Soon I came to tolerate and eventually love the whole show, which is kind of the point.

Throughout the 90s I tended to be the only person in my immediate group of friends that listened to him. As time has progressed this has changed as when that identification is made one tends to have made a friend for life and this evening nearly every weblog I read has a post like this on it. I don't think he has fans as such or followers. Rather he made a certain frame of mind acceptable and this, I think, is his real legacy.

In fact I'll go out on a limb and say it's not really about the music. The music is a conduit for something else, something quite intangible which I think comes down to that fucked up sense of juxtaposition he imposed on us. He made having an open mind cool, which is saying something when you think about it. Once you'd accepted that you could listen to every form of every form of music and appreciate it on its own merits then you could apply this to everything else in life. Any form of creative endeavour is worthwhile. The fact that someone, anyone, is doing something different and interesting becomes vital.

On the whole fans (for want of a better word) of him tend to be sensitive folk who just want things to be nice, who feel beaten down by the relentless enforcement of mediocrity. He not only provided a place on the radio for us to retreat to, his spirit encouraged others to do the same. Every small club, fanzine, website, setup of any description that implicitly encourages people to just do stuff owes him a debt, and they know it. The generation, generations really, that grew up with him learned something important and it stuck with them. We're the ones who smile when we see enthusiasm, who know that there is so much more to life. We're the ones who get it.

John Peel, thank you.

Comic festival - very enjoyable. Was expecting to spend a couple of hours there and then go to the pub but turned out to be well worth it. Loads of small press and indy folk including many new to me or known but met for the first time. Less frenetic than usual but still busy.

Of course it was actually crap if your conception of UK comics is that was inclined, and I get that. A chum who's drawing sheeroo stuff for the yanks took one look at the hall, shrugged and left. I took one look at the hall and realised I was going to have to make many trips back and still not talk to everyone I wanted to. It's a perception thing and a confirmation that my idea about comics is somewhat different to certain others, specifically those who are somewhat blinkered in their idea of what comics are. Fuller report to hopefully follow.

Bought more small press comics that I was intending to and could have bought more funds allowing. Quality is high at the moment, which is very encouraging. The SP scene seems to be in one of its periodic highs right now - everything's gelling together nicely. Of course it's all going to fall apart into shit in within the next couple of years but let's enjoy it while it lasts.

One nice shock of the day was going into the bar and seeing a familiar but out of context face. My old Uni chum Craig (who until very recently has had nothing to do with the wacky world of comics) was there who I haven't seen for bloody ages. Big "fuckin' hell mate!" hugging session followed by much reminiscing. I've really lost touch with my friends from that period but he hasn't and a fair few of them are still in Birmingham, which will be cool.

Stayed at Andy KK's artists garret (top floor, no heating, no hot water, 20,000,000,000 books and comics) which is always a pleasure. On the Sunday we went to the Whitechapel gallery to see the Paul Nobel exhibit with Sacha Mardou and John Chandler. It was good but not as stunning as I would have hoped. He suffers from the fact that he's doing comics but not really doing comics, so I look at them as comics and can see that they're not really comics, and that kinda spoils it for me. The giant egg (with a comic/not-comic drawn on it) was cool though. The giant projection of an egg coming out of a woman's arse was just silly though. Worth going to if only because of the detail allowing many long minutes studying each huge drawing. (on the Whitechapel site they look kinda small - they're in fact 10ft+ tall.) And you have to take your shoes off for no discernible reason which is always fun.

Then onto Tate Modern to check out the new big turbine hall thing, which turned out to be a big letdown. I realised quite soon on that I'd seen Bruce Nauman's video works before and not liked them, finding them too easy, too obvious and really annoying. This show is a selection of samples from said works out of context played through speakers along the hall. For five minutes the conceit is cool and it's really interesting walking around as the voices morph into each other, but when you realise how bland and dull the actual content is it just gets annoying. It could have been so much better, maybe by putting random mikes around London and feeding the sounds into the gallery or something. Such a waste. I saw it's running until March next year and I pity the poor staff.

Met up with Craig Smith, poet, musician, novelist, O'Reilly rep and general good egg (who comments on this blog as "smithylad") and we went for a pint which was nice. He was interested in the whole small press comics thing which Andy and myself were all charged up by and it was interesting to compare it with his excursions in the world of poetry. Then a nice slow walk along the south bank including a stretch of the beach before heading off to Anna's for food, chats and a comfy sofa.

Monday I was supposed to be meeting up with chum Kath but she'd gone and gotten a new job meaning she wasn't free on Mondays anymore and neglected to tell me. Cue one exasperated phone call. I love her to pieces but... Still, all was not lost and spent a nice day wondering around the west end with Anna checking out the kooky shops of Soho and drinking much tea.

Many photos were taken and are on their way to Flickrland.

Just got back from the supermarket, which was another reason for buying the bike and freeing myself from the tyranny of public transport. It's been a while since I went 24 hour shopping but it's still a revelation. As I was unloading my basket onto the belt the assistant didn't start scanning until I'd finished and I realised I was rushing because that's what you do and I didn't need to. It was all so civilised and calm. No tannoy announcements, no families in the way, plenty of fresh fruit and veg (though no bread - have to try again at 4am). By no means a pleasant experience, this is a supermarket after all, but an eminently bearable one with zero stress. Highly recommended.

Odd isn't it that an absence of people makes a place "civilised".

Oh yeah, and while I was standing by the carrots this guy asked me where the milk was. I was wearing my leather jacket and hi-viz. I did not look like a Tescos employee. He realised this when I looked oddly at him, but I did know where the milk was. I then proceeded to forget to buy any milk. The bugger sucked my milk-buying powers from me.

Hair was getting a bit shaggy (and while it's not an issue, boy am I going grey) so shaved my head just in time for the cold weather to hit. I can feel my body heat just rushing out of my scalp. That said, its nice to be wearing my wooly hat again. I missed you, wooly hat. Gloves are cool too. Last year I was dreading the cold but I'm quite looking forward to it this time.

Cycled to work yesterday for the first time. It was also the first time I'd cycled at night and in the cold since the very early 90s. I must say that bombing down the hill at 5.15am is quite exhilarating and I'm glad I stole so many hi-viz jackets over the last year. Currently I'm sporting one from Duo Airways, who went bust a few months back so it's okay to mention it. Getting to work by bike was great and much better than the bus but coming home, up the hill, after eight hours on my feet cleaning bits of metal with a high-pressure air hose was a bit of a trial.

It's fireworks month in Kingstanding again - the first noticeable one was yesterday. Every back garden will have a fireworks party at some point between now and Nov 5th and then for a while after. Currently it's a little disconcerting but soon it'll just become background noise. I wonder - community displays are so heath and safety stringent these days that going to them is somewhat less involving than it used to be. Maybe that's why people feel the need to have their own fireworks 50 metres from my window. Or maybe they're just tossers.

I've decided I will be going to London next weekend ostensibly for a comics "festival" but really for the social side. If you're going, see you there. If you're a non-comics London-based chum and fancy a coffee, get in touch. This does mean I won't make the Xmas blogmeet thingy. [Update - looks like the Blog thing might be moved to mid December in which case I probably will go after all.]

Got back home on Monday afternoon after a fortnight away.

Spent a good many hours glued to the computer downloading all the stuff I'd missed including about 300MB of music from Gmail and few weeks worth of 3hive. Lovely.

Upgraded a Mac my Dad had dropped off to sort out when I was away. Had a chunk of geek glee networking them via a variety of cables and wi-fi. Decided I want another computer for my bedroom. Also decided I don't need another computer for my bedroom.

Watched Starsky and Hutch, the modern version, which was surprisingly not awful.

Intended to get up at a reasonable time today but slept in.

Felt a cold coming on.

Went to Halfords to buy a bike using some birthday money. Spent over an hour standing in Halfords while they very slowly fitted mudguards to it. Was unable to go elsewhere as Halfords is in the middle of nowhere and I don't have a bus pass yet because I'm buying a bike. Develop a general hatred for Radio 1 DJ Wes. Wonder if I would be quicker carrying the stuff home and doing it myself. Conclude I wouldn't but at least I wouldn't be standing examining the different types of peddles available.

Cycle home. First bike ride of any distance involving hills in over a year. Felt like it. Good, though, to be covering distances that are beyond walking without having to take the bloody bus.

Tried fitting my old bike rack to discover the bolt is too small to hold both it and the rear mudguard, so the rear mudguard came off. Life is like that sometimes. Also discovered the gears weren't fitted properly so adjusted them so they were. Wonder what they spent so long fiddling with while I was reading a Haynes manual cover to cover.

Cold got worse. Filled a couple of hankies. Relented and took a pill. At least I can see through my brain now, if not my eyes.

Determined not to get down on the fact that I've somewhat failed to do stuff I wanted to do this last couple of days. Start slowly...

I feel like I'm in a strange place at the moment even though I'm not. I'm at my mums for a fortnight fitting a new bathroom with my uncle which is nice, working but not for an employer, but it's been really hard work so far and I'm utterly knackered, pretty much working, eating and sleeping. So while an absence of blog posts might not be unusual I actually have an excuse this time.

I'm also coming to grips with the slowternet again - one does take broadband so much for granted these days.

And just now I was reading Chris Reynolds' The Dial in preparation for reviewing it, fell asleep and dreamed a whole new Mauretania comic. Which was cool.

I went away for a few days and came back accompanied by a new Mac. It's a three year old G4 tower with two, count 'em, two 19 inch LaCie monitors and a ramped-up bunch of memory n'stuff. You might be asking yourself how an agency temp on a budget can afford such glories - suffice to say I'm a very lucky boy and let's leave it at that.

So the last 24 hours have been spent transferring everything off the trusty five year old old iMac, which is now sitting dejectedly in the corner of the room (though it'll be off to a good and loving home soon), loading the 15 days (not including spoken, radio or live recordings) worth of mp3s I've accumulated into iTunes, watching the AVI movies the iMac couldn't cope withh, rearranging this corner of the living room to accommodate these absurdly large monitors and generally tweaking till my eyes burn. Tomorrow I'm investigating WiFi and DVD burners.

I may be some time. Normal service will resume, ooh, eventually...

Had a bit of a come-down after Caption, which is a good sign but made for a rather irritating couple of days at the car factory where I'm thinking all these great things went through my mind over the weekend and now I'm putting together a small part of a gear box over and over and over and then the evenings are spent in a fug of brain-full stupor as all the great things clogged up and wouldn't budge in an inspiration-constipation kinda way. All seems to be getting better now though.

One very annoying thing was all the ideas for new projects that kept popping up, annoying because I feel I've already got too many projects on the go as it is. I'm actually quite jealous of the 'real' artists I know in that they generally have one project on the go based around their particular skill, whereas I don't have a specific skill, more a general smattering of things I'm quite good at, none of which tend to stand alone, and a seemingly endless supply of ideas for things that would be cool to do, along with never enough time or energy or (more often to be honest) self belief to see them through.

I like being an ideas person, don't get me wrong, but sometimes I wish I just had a sketch-book, the ability to draw and the attitude to stick to it.

So anyway, four new projects have come to mind this last few days which don't seem to be going away. Try as I might they just seem far too sensible to not do. First up is a zine, tentatively called Brain Fart, wherein I'll sift through the quarter of a million words in this weblog and see if any are worth preserving in print. The chances are a few of them might be, plus I've always intended to collect the Farmblog at some point. Next up are a couple of comics history projects, a web-presence for my small press comics archive being the obvious one (since I'm currently working on cataloging them all) and a small press comics history site based on the panel I chaired at Caption looking at each year in turn and gradually adding all the important things that happened and comics published. Finally I'm still thinking of bringing back the comics mail order distro (that BugPowder was before it was a weblog) as a small concern running it more as a publishing house than a shop gradually building up a list of quality self published comics of distiction, partly because I think there's a need, partly to subsidise the other comics projects, partly because I still have stock left over from the last time and partly because I want to.

Oh, and there's another idea for a gated music aficionados site that's been brewing for the last month but that's going to require me learning stuff first, and I don't think I'm going to have time for that.

So if you come up with a cool idea and want me to be involved and I seem really keen but keep edging away from any actual commitment to actually do any actual stuff that would take actual time and actual energy (or actual self belief), this is why.

Okay, brain unclogged now.

I must say I'm loving this mad weather. One minute it's blindingly sunny and sweat is pouring off me, the next there's thunder and lightning, and then it's sunny again. It's full of tropical excitement and such a refreshing change from the usual weeks of drizzle one tends to get in the Midlands.

Back in May I started the process of claiming back excess tax paid in the last financial year. A few weeks later I got a form in the post, one of those small forms asking you to detail you employment over the year detailing weekly income and explaining any gaps. Since my weekly income changed every week, and since I tend to see a red mist whenever confronted by this kind of restrictive, intrusive, categorising form, I took them to their word and used four separate sheets of paper to detail, by hand (don't have a printer right now) every week from leaving the farm in August 2003 to April 2004. I crammed this into the tiny A6 envelope and waited.

As soon as I'd posted it I realised I'd screwed up. Confronted with a wadge of badly scrawled info-dump the human-being at the tax office would, quite rightly, shove it to the bottom of the pile and when they did finally get to it, probably on a Friday afternoon after a bad week, would not look on it with a positive light. I'd been a tosser and deserved to be treated as I would treat a tosser.

But still I waited, occasionally thinking about popping down to the tax office to investigate but never getting around to it. The potential sum was quite high and I'd never done this before so was interested to see how it would turn out. This morning an official looking envelope was on the doormat, A5 in size so not just a statement or bill, it actually contained something. For the fourth or fifth time this year (I don't get much post to be honest) I thought it might be my tax return.

It was. And for the full amount. All the income tax I paid last year has come back to me just as the last couple of lean months agency wise are starting to adversely affect my bank balance. Yay!

I just brought a power drill. One of those cordless jobs that doubles up as an electric screwdriver and has a satisfyingly large battery pack at the base of the handle. At the same time I bought some shelf brackets, screws, wall-plugs and a saw, along with some courgette seeds.

What can this mean? (Other than I'm putting up some shelves...)

Lots to write about it but either I have no time or when I do I have this writers block wherein everything I wanted to write about during the day that seemed interesting and/or funny just doesn't seem worth it. Meanwhile the backlog of news gets bigger and bigger and while I'm not overly bothered about serving my loyal audience, because though I appreciate your custom it's not like there isn't anything else out there for you to read so it's best not to get too precious about it all, I do regret not recording stuff since the last year's archive has proved very useful for putting things in context and doing my tax return-thingy. Still, I'm off for a little weekend holiday on a boat somewhere off the coast of Essex with misc. maternal relatives. At the very least photos will be taken. Maybe I'll manage to write about it...

Sam's big widescreen telly blew up the other day (well, it went pop and there was the acrid electrical smell of plastic burning) and when the replacement arrived the question of where to put the old one until such time as it can be disposed came up. Obviously the answer is to stick it in the middle of the front lawn for a month or two, as is the accepted norm. I could even make a nice rockery feature out of it.

More adventures in the English language... I thought I'd made up a word, which you may have seen in recent postings. The verb (I think) to smatter, as in what you would be doing were you to scatter lumps on clay on a concrete surface, a mash-up of scatter and the sound "smat". Imagine my surprise when the spell-checker let it through. Turns out it's a real word though the meaning is a little off: "1. To speak (a language) without fluency: smatters Russian. 2. To study or approach superficially; dabble in." It's nice to know that my long and tortured journey through the vagaries of my mother tongue occasionally intersects with that of the dictionary...

Been to London today to meet with my client, deliver the job and discuss follow up work. Feels weird typing that. I delivered a job to a client. And the cheque is in the bank. That the client is my step-brother doesn't seem so important now. I'm a freelance web designer. Looks like I'll need to do a "hire me" page.

I'd set the site up running on Movable Type, despite it not being a weblog in any stretch of the imagination, partly because I know the program inside out but also because I wanted some way for Alastair to edit and add new pages without coming to me. However, while MT is free for me as a non-commercial user, Alastair is running a business so a license would be needed at the cost of US$200 (approx £115). I'd spent a day looking at free open-source alternatives but none of them did what I wanted (run something very unlike a weblog) and I couldn't for the life of me find a content management system that would just produce html files from templates. I'd never really realised quite what a good set-up MT is, flexible, powerful and, once set up (that's the tricky part) incredibly user-friendly. So with some trepidation I talked Alastair through editing and posting and when I mentioned the cost he was sold immediately. Perspective is a strange thing.

But it hasn't gone to my head, this wild and wacky world of noomeja I find myself in. I took the Megabus down and spent, in total, nine hours on busses today (six inter-city, three in the cities) and amazingly it didn't kill me. A few months ago that would have been a nightmare but I guess all the traveling I do for the temp jobs has inured me to the omnibus. I arrived at home at 10pm feeling like I'd just popped into town.

After the meeting I spent a couple of hours wandering around Hyde Park and Piccadilly before meeting Craig, poet and O'Reilly rep, for a quick pint. As ever, never enough time for a decent chat, but then most people are working at that time of day...

I'm in London on Monday for a meeting (ooh, look at 'im!) and should have a couple of hours free in the afternoon if anyone wants to meet up around Victoria for a quick drink before, say, 5.30.

Thanks to my current budgetary situation I haven't really been using cash machines that much all year, and in the last month not at all, so when I went to the machine last week I found myself with a mental block. Problem was, if you stopped me at gun point and forced me to reveal my PIN I'd have been at at a loss. I remember the pattern my fingers make but not the actual numbers. So you'd have to shoot me.

Only this time I couldn't remember the finger pattern. I knew there was a four in there, probably a one and either a seven or a nine, or both. The sequence, no idea. And the more I thought about it, the less decisive I became. I tried clearing my mind, removing all rational thought and relying on instinct, but the "three tries and we eat your card" threat forced me to make a decision. So I bit the bullet, furrowed my brow, clenched my bowels and went to Kwik Save to buy some eggs and get twenty quid cashback.

In three days time I'll have a new PIN, which will no doubt be at the forefront of my mind so if you want to stop me at gun point that'll be the time to do so.

l-r: Steel toecapped working boots, 18 months service; Semi-retired Magnums, 2 years service, now for gardening; Current Magnums, 6 months old.

I discovered Magnum Classics about seven years ago and never looked back. I'd been wearing army boots most of my life, generally buying the cheapest boots in the army surplus store and replacing them every year. Then I saw a pair of Magnums hanging from the shelf. They cost £60, way over my usual budget, but the looked kinda nice, like a boot, but also like a shoe and potentially comfortable. I tried them on and was immediately converted, the notion that a hefty boot could be as comfortable as a trainer was incredible to me. I'm now on my third pair.

While my work boots aren't as neat as the Magnums I've developed a soft spot for them because, along with the combat trousers I bought before going to the IoW farm, they've been with me through all my strange jobs these last 18 months, and they look it. But despite being to hell and back foot-wise they're still perfectly functionable - not bad for £20.

I always knew Macy was a bit of a star but I didn't really realise the wider effect she'd had on people until last week. Sam and I have had loads of comments on our blogs, emails, phone calls and the like about her dying and a lot of folk seem quite affected by the whole thing even if they'd never met her, so thanks for all that. I'm kinda okay about the whole thing, probably because she was never "quite right", mentally or physically, but the absence is still quite striking. I think I see a movement out of the corner of my eye and it's not her, or I come into a room and it's empty. As Hg said, "The ancient Egyptians considered cats to be gods and they were - of course - absolutely right."

The story goes that three years ago, about 6 months after Sam moved in here, she just turned up in the back garden miaowing to be let in. Sam let her in and she darted upstairs to what's now my room and curled up as if she lived here. The previous owner had had loads of cats so maybe she was part of that brood, but whatever, from then on she stayed. She was a manky thing, all matted hair and under-fed, but after a trip to the vet and plenty of feeding up she was up to her normal self. No teeth, a dribbling problem, no sense of balance and a habit of weeing in all the wrong places, but a level of affection never before seen in a feline. It wasn't so much that she wanted love, she gave love, incessantly, whether you wanted it or not.

And now she's gone. The house feels kinda empty, like we've put her out for a bit but she's not coming back in. Soon the remnants of her smell will dissipate, the carpet will be hovered but I'm sure for a while I'll be finding her fur matted to my socks or bits of cat litter in the corners of the kitchen. But she'll never curl up in my arm-pit like a boneless vibrating sack ever again...

[Movie of Macy from last December]

I am reasonably familiar with the concept of entropy, that a new thing will erode and become an old thing over time. However, I'm having great touble accepting that a t-shirt I bought over five years ago and have probably worn every fortnight since is no longer a good t-shirt that can be worn. At the weekend I was asked about the Add N to X t-shirt I was wearing and I realised I'd bought it in 1997, yet it's one of my three "best" shirts. The other 20 or so are now only good for labouring jobs, which is a shame as I really like some of them, especially the early Mark Pawson designs. The most recent addition to my wardrobe was bought two and a half years ago. Last year I got really pissed off that a pair of jeans had developed a hole, until I realised I'd probably worn them 300 times.

I just can't get my head around the idea that clothes do not last forever, especially as they seem to last me quite a long time. Clothes are just things that I have. As long as I'm comfortable with them (physically and mentally) I don't give them much thought, and so it comes as quite a surprise when I pull a shirt out of the drawer to discover the arm-pit is missing or the collar is frayed.

I've been keeping my eyes open for new t-shirts but nothing really jumps out at me, or if it does it's some horrendously priced art object (and yes, I know that since it's going to last me over five years £30 for a shirt isn't a lot, but I can't quite bring myself to pay over fifteen). Maybe I'm too old to be buying interesting t-shirts and should just give up and buy some plain ones. Whatever, I'd better do something about it - one day someone's going to notice that when I "dress up" (ha! me dressing up!) to go out it's either Betty Page or Batz Maru.

(And yes, this was a weblog post written to justify an amusing title thought up at work)

Ooh, I did a lot this weekend, and I'm going to tell you all about it, brain-fart style.

It's funny how context affects behaviour, as rapidly apparent at last weekend's big comics convention/festival/gathering/whatever in Birstol. I've been going to these things in their various incarnations regularly since 1989 and it's got to the stage where there are things I do and ways I behave that only ever occur in this environment, specifically the consumption of alcohol.

Popped out in the garden today to mow the lawn and generally get some exercise after a rather debauched weekend and noticed with glee that the four potatoes I stuck in the ground a few weeks ago have turned into plants. This may not seem like much but these are the first things I've planted from seed for over 15 years, so I'm a happy bunny. However, on closer inspection the area was infested with ants. As with the compost bin I'm again wondering whether this is a good, bad or indifferent thing. The ants are probably nesting there because I've dug the soil over making it nice and tunnel-able, but could they be feeding off my tubers? And if they are, is there anything I can do about it? I decided not to worry about it and planted some Spinach seeds. Lets see if we can go two for two...

I think I may investigate this odd job man career further...

The new compost bin is coming on nicely. When I last stuck my head in there was a good musty smell along with the ever surprising blast of heat, the rotting orange peel looked like something out of a Peter Greenaway film and there were plenty of bugs munching away doing their magical digestive thing of turning my scraps and cuttings into fertile shit ready for the microbes and worms to further develop. I looked on at this visible army of first-stage composters with pleasure and pride before I noticed the ants. It occurred to me that the ants would not be shitting in the compost bin, rather they'd be taking the food outside and into their nests where their fertile excrement would be of no use to me at all. What good is this? If I'd wanted to feed the ants I would have left the scraps scattered around the place or even by their many ant-hills in the lawn. By putting it in the bin I've specifically specified it as compost fodder and these ants are hell bent on ruining everything! How dare they! Then I realised the ants aren't after the classic composting materials. They're probably going for the sugar residue on the teabags and other small traces of not-strictly-vegetation things that have slipped into the bin. By removing such things they're probably helping me out, ensuring the compost is purer and more effective. And thus the ants regained their position in my scheme of composting. Had me worried for a minute though...

Moved some stuff around in the living room today so as to free up the big patio doors and thus appreciate the summer that appears to have arrived. In doing so revealed an area under my desk where Macy the cat had urinated. Lovely. Two questions, the more urgent one first:

Does anyone have any good tips for getting the smell of cat piss out of a carpet? This is proving quite gaggingly vile now it's been disturbed and I don't think it'll be going away in a hurry.

Does anyone know of a cheap alternative to odour-free cat litter? Macy is tediously fussy about her shit-box and while we remove the turds and put a new layer of litter in there each day (emptying it every 5 days or so) she does seem to prefer the rest of the fucking house. It's beyond economical reasonableness to replace it daily and she doesn't like the cheap stuff at all. The stuff she likes is made of "sepiolite". (Interestingly her excrement isn't proving a problem for me to clear up - just let it harden and break out the toilet paper. It's just the piss that's getting to me.)

I should add that being mentally retarded she's beyond toilet training and being a wimp a cat-flap will probably bring other cats in rather than encourage her to go out.

Amusing Macy fact: when shitting outside she prefers to go right in the middle of the lawn. And I mean right in the middle. You could draw lines from each corner and her crap would be at the intersection.

Feeling much better now. No pain for 24 hours, just a dull awareness of what was there. Head's a lot clearer too. Seeing the GP on Monday to hopefully find out what, if anything, this all means and then life goes on, I guess. Thanks for the emails. All is good.

I've been having these chest pains the last couple of weeks, on and off, usually in the evening before going to sleep. Nothing to major but enough to reduce my sleeping somewhat to the extent that I just thought they were self-perpetuating. I'm tired because my body aches, my body aches because I'm tired. Monday it gets a little worse but I shrug it off, have an early dinner and an early night. Tuesday it's getting seriously uncomfortable so I buy some heartburn stuff from the chemist, which makes no difference, and go straight to bed when I get home. Waking up at 11.00pm there's still this incredible pain in my heart and lungs. Sam suggests the NHS Direct phone line and I concur - we're both flitting between thinking it could be nothing, it could be serious, so best to be sure without making too much fuss. The nurse on the phone pretty quickly passes me to the Ambulance service and at 12.01am I'm admitted to Good Hope Hospital A&E department in Sutton Coldfield.

Which, if you were wondering, is why I've been a little quiet this week.

After an ECG, blood test and X-ray showed nothing out of the ordinary the doctor concluded I've got Gastritis (here's the nearest thing I could find on the NHS site), prescribed me a weeks worth of Zoton (Lansoprazole) and sent me on my way with instructions to visit my GP for a follow-up. Which was nice, except I still had this intense pain in my lower chest as if I'd been punched from the inside coupled with extreme weakness probably due to a combination of tiredness, pain and the inability to breath properly.

But at least I'm not dying or anything. (Although, to be honest, if I was dying it would make this fucking worthwhile...)

So I've been off work all week doing absolutely nothing because I can't actually do anything other than sit or lie down, and even then I can't stay in the same position for too long because the middle of my body is a tender, bruised pain machine so every turn, every slight movement, causes discomfort. Today it's eased off a bit but walking down the road to the doctors was a major effort. Add to this that I haven't been eating properly for a few days, initially because it was just a bad idea and then because I shouldn't really eat anything vaguely acidic so it's been mashed potatoes and chicken soup. Oh, and add some more moany shit while your at it. Like how the cat keeps wanting to sit on my lap which is so not going to work. Like how up until tonight I can't read or type so I've been reduced to watching broadcast TV and crappy movies (don't want anything too demanding). And the fact that I've only had four cigarettes since Tuesday and three cups of tea, not that I wanted them but the idea of going cold turkey and getting stomach cramps at this moment in time is just too much to bear. Oh, and the backache, the backache... If I'd actually done anything active it'd be justified but backache from lying down? What's that about?

And of course the whole being whisked off to hospital in the middle of the night and having days of inactivity to reflect ain't too good for the soul. My strength and concentration has been wiped out in one fell swoop by some damned indigestion. Is this the future? The A&E doctor made sure I wasn't going to die but what's the GP going to say? I know I've had a pretty fucked up adult life so am I reaping what I sowed? Already? I've been pondering "the point" for quite a while now (no doubt manifesting itself in my strange jobs and endless blogging - try reading between the lines) so is this my wake-up call? Can I deal with it? My problems have always been pretty much mental based and physical work has been a release from them. Now I've manifested a physical problem - what's the release from that?

Ah, at least I'm coherent enough to write this stuff down, which is a distinct improvement on this morning, and the pain has moved down to my lower gut and turned into more of a dull discomfort (with occasional stabs). By next week I'll no doubt be back to normal with a nice prescription for tummy drugs and be back at work with a cautionary note to take it easy (of course this has to happen the year I'm not getting sick pay, but I'm not worrying about that just yet - still got some savings). But even so.

Big sigh...

(comments off, email welcome...)

Not written any blog entries of a diary nature. Bit odd but not a problem. Am writing this now in note form for when I look back through the archives and wonder what I did in April-May 2004.

Worked at an Art publisher last week stock-taking prints. Was struck by how anodyne and bland the whole Art print industry is. Very much like popular fiction only flatter and on larger pieces of paper. Don't think I saw a single painting I'd like to have about the place. Office staffed by many young attractive women which made me realise I hadn't worked with young attractive women since the bookselling days. To think I used to take them for granted... Building opposite was being demolished with huge machines that looked like dinosaurs tearing away at them and a large brick-crushing machine. Publisher was located behind the Mailbox complex, an intriguing area being central, semi-industrial, run down and up-and-coming. Suspect it's in a "transitional" phase before being affected by the Mailbox renewal. Interesting place to walk around, though. Lots of small streets, old buildings and hills.

Watched Buffy season five at the weekend, again in one fell swoop. Geeky-type friends had warned me it gets rubbish after season three but I haven't found this. Suspect it's because I'm watching them all in one go with no ads to slow things down and that while I really enjoyed them I'm not getting obsessional about it so things that might annoy others just wash over me. Fave moment so far is Spike's Anthony Robbins joke towards the end of season four - laughed so much I had to pause the DVD.

Bought a compost bin as part of the council's discount scheme on Sunday. It's fucking huge - a 330 litre job - and has been named "the fat child". Barely fitted in the back of Sam's Mum's car but we managed it. Transfered my existing heap into it and the smell was delicious. Also planted four potatoes a couple of weeks back and bought some carrot, spinach and cabbage seeds, but haven't planted them yet.

Gardening has re-started because we don't have to move after all. Landlady has figured out a way to not sell the house so we're here for the duration. This is good news as I was starting to dread moving again, probably winding up in a dingy bedsit somewhere. Still not 100% happy about living in this area (St Georges Day was something of a wake-up call, if a wake-up call was needed) but on balance it's worth it.

Done a lot of work on Sam's Mum's garden recently which was great because I got to get muddy and sweaty and got paid for it. Was slightly shocked that after digging over the vegetable patch (about the size of a small bedroom) I was utterly knackered and in pain for days. I'm not in the physical shape I was in after the farm. Yesterday I sorted out part of her wall which had fallen down which involved hitting bricks with a hammer for an hour. Am thinking more and more about getting into gardening, or rather garden clearing. I'm utterly inexperienced at growing things am great at digging them up and cutting them back.

Saw Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and thoroughly enjoyed it. Went to my first ColdRice gig at Bar Academy to see Dead Brothers (apologies for the stupid frameset redirection thingy - select them from the pull down menu in the sidebar) who were Fucking Amazing in a Swiss-funeral-band kinda way. Support from Guitar Fucker (ditto) was stunning as well. The ColdRice guys and gals are on a track to right-ness here.

Been working on step-brother's new website the last couple of weeks which has been interesting as I've never designed a non-blog business site properly before. Not quite ready to launch yet but I'm pleased with it so far. Managed to replicate his business card in CSS which was cool. Hosting it on 34sp who offer just enough stuff at very good prices.

Started work today at a Birmingham hospital in the Pharmacy stores. Despite it only being a temporary sick-leave-cover job (probably a month at most) I have to fill out a disclosure form which goes in a frightening amount of detail. They want all my addresses from the last five years, which is at least five if I don't count my no-fixed-abode period last year, along with three forms of ID. Suspect this is due to me handling expensive and potent drugs. Job itself seems good so far - basic order picking and the like - and the people are nice and chilled. Only problem is the old four-busses-a-day routine meaning I leave the house at 7.15am and get home at 6.45pm. Only for a month though, and the money is better than usual. Hospital is behind my old University which makes the bus journey something of a trip down memory lane as it meanders around the back streets of Edgbaston.

And I just this minute got a phone call from my sister informing me she's pregnant again. Neice/nephew #2 due December/January. Woo!

The problem with being pretty much self taught in the more advanced ways and wherefores of the English language is that there are a few gaps in my knowledge. While I'm sure I use them well enough I've never quite gotten my head around the whole verb-adjective thing, and while it's fun to laugh at Trekkies for the whole split infinitive thing I have no idea what one is or why it's a bad thing to do. And if you told me I'd forget it in a minute. I've only recently got the its/it's thing straight in my head, though I have to concentrate to spot it, and I have to use mental tricks with certain spellings, usually of the double L variety. Generally I figure stuff out by judging where it looks or sounds right, or if not right then nice. This may or may not mean I have a quirky and unique style - I'll leave that to the reader to judge - but it does mean I'll never get an editorial or proof reading job.

What prompted me to confess all this is that I recently discovered that anacronym is not a word, or rather it's two words. Obviously it's not something I write very often as the spell checker would have picked it up, but for years I've been calling something "an anacronym". Couple of reasons for this error: 1) the rhythm is much better with the additional syllable so it's more aesthetically pleasing, and 2) it's similar to "analogy", a word I tend to use a fair bit, so it looks right. Of course, having discovered the correct spelling of acronym, my faith in an-words has been shaken and I just spent a good couple of minutes trying to figure out if "analogous" should in fact be "alogous".

Welcome to my world...

Stumbled through the gaggle of school kids (two at a time) into the newsagent to renew my bus pass and maybe pick up a paper. Grab the last copy of the Guardian and go queue only to see someone else holding a larger than usual collection of newsprint with a familiar graphic design. That they sell out of all three copies (I've gotten there at delivery time so I know their order levels) every day means there are at least four of us in this Godforsaken area but it was still a bit of a shock. Had I not been thick-headed with sleep and stiff-legged with gardening I would have said hello, but I didn't. Maybe I should get there really early and stick a note in each copy suggesting a drink?

I've gotten my first paid website commision job thingy, a cash-in-hand gardening job for the weekend, and Buffy season four is in the house.

In the meanwhile you may wish to heatedly debate the Footprint.org post.

The last time I went to the cinema it was with my sister in Banbury to see Lost in Translation (which was excellent). Unbeknown to her a friend, who was coming over for dinner the next day, was sitting next to us. It was weird but cool in a nice synchronistic way.

Monday I went to the cinema with Andy to see Shaun of the Dead (which was excellent). Unbeknown to me sitting two rows in front was flatmate Sam. It was weird but cool in a nice synchronistic way.

Things seem to be happening. While intellectually I know that causality is an infinitely complicated thing and that I can ascribe very little to the patterns that appear, it's tempting as a fallible human to read too much into them. I think it's commonly known as not going mad.

Just found out I've got to move again, which makes sense as I've been here for six months. Due to reasons I won't go into here the landlady has to sell (nothing to do with us - it's a financial necessity thing) so in 3 or 4 months, give or take, I'll be looking for a new place to live. So, since this worked last time, I'm spreading the word on the blog.

Ideally I'd like somewhere in South Birmingham (Moseley/Edgbaston/Bearwood) around £200pcm + bills. If you hear of anything do let me know. Alternatively, a nice 2 bed place for £400 for the both of us.

The new place will be home number 22, so it's not like I'm not used to this shit. Sam, on the other hand, has been in this house for three years so it's a shitter for her. Good job I haven't taken my stuff out of storage yet...

A year ago I left London and started this strange and unplanned journey. I've been thinking about this all month trying to put some kind of context or derive some kind of meaning, or at least compare myself now with myself then. Interestingly the person writing my weblog a year back seems a very different person, annoyingly so at times. I thought I was being really open with my blogging but it all seems so superficial and doesn't back up my memories of what I was thinking and feeling. But then it's probably a good thing I didn't make them public at the time.

Anyway, just wanted to mark it. As for this time next year I have no idea...

As regular readers will know, Macy the cat is something of a fuckwit. (New readers can catch up here, here, here and here.) Today she excelled herself by being not only incredibly stupid but also incredibly intelligent at the same time.

I came home this evening to an empty house. Usually I'm greeted by the cat-of-inordinate-affection at the door but there was no sign. I thought I heard a faint meow but she wasn't out back so I carried on slightly bemused by her absence but kinda grateful for a bit of quiet before the inevitable storm of attention. An hour passed. I checked the doors again but no sign. Then I heard the meow again and thought I'd check upstairs. My bedroom door was closed, as it always is since she shat in there the first week I was here, plus I kinda want to keep it a fluff free zone since my clothes generally live on the floor. I opened the door and Macy came rushing out.

My door doesn't shut properly. It's one of those cheapy doors that is supposed to click shut but the spring loaded clicky thing is missing. Thanks to it hanging at a slight angle it closes automatically but it only takes a gentle shove to open it. Recently Macy has discovered how to get into my room, usually at about 11am if I'm still in bed and she's getting bored. She must have tried this at some point today only the door closed behind her trapping her in there. There was a faint but noticeable smell of piss and it wasn't mine.

Like I said, the floor of my small room is pretty much covered with clothes along with the books, comics and general papers I've accumulated over the last few months. I don't have any furniture due to all my stuff being put in storage when I went on the farm and since I only really use the room to sleep in it's not been a problem. Suddenly I got worried. This cat has no brain. Where could she have chosen to dump her load.

She must like me. In a corner she'd found a small stack of A4 photocopies I'd been carrying around for months intending to do something with but never getting around to. She'd dragged half of them out and pissed right in the middle spilling nothing on the carpet at all. She'd then taken a dump on another piece of paper and gently covered that with my tracksuit trousers. She'd managed to find the least important thing in my room and use that. The trousers weren't even soiled (though I will of course be washing them ASAP) just used as a delicate camouflage exercise. A couple of minutes to clear up and after leaving the window open for a bit you wouldn't know the room had been used as a litter tray.

Now, I must do something about that door...

Rhetorical question: is it me or is train travel getting worse?

I'm off to London tonight primarily to attend the UK Web and Mini Comics Thing but also to catch up with some folk and finally see The Weather Project at Tate Modern before it ends. There are three operators running train from Birmimgham: Virgin, Silverlink and Chiltern. I refuse to pay the extorionate rates Virgin charge but their service is fucked tonight anyway due to something breaking down somewhere or some shit. Same goes for Silverlink, my usual choice for budget rail travel. I was going to try Chiltern this time anyway but now I have no choice if I want to get into London before midnight. I did have the forsight to phone up and check everything's actually running though and while I'm going to get there all right, getting back is going to take four hours involving a train to Banbury and a coach to Brum.

I've used trains a lot over the last year between various cities and every time there's been a problem.

Why am I even bothering to write this?

Wish me luck...

For the first time in years and years I'm finding myself a slave to broadcast television. I quit TV in, ooh, 1998 and haven't lived with one since. However, Sam's got cable so she can keep up with the baseball and occasionally I'll have a slump in front of it, usually BBC4 to be honest, but I never schedule my life around it. I resent having to do that, probably because you don't have to schedule your life around the internet. I'll look in the TV listings, see something that looks interesting and suddenly realise that I have to wait until a specific time before I can enjoy it. So I don't bother.

However, tonight I'll be forcing myself to stay up until 10.00pm (bear in mind I've been getting up at 4.00am this week) to watch the second episode of Black Books. I can't video it because Sam's taping ER and it's her kit. But it's bloody brilliant, the best thing since Spaced, and I've even set my alarm to make sure I don't miss it. Aberration? The start of a slippery slope?

This week I'm pulling a sickie, which is a bit odd really as I don't get sick pay from the agency. What I do get, however, is a reputation and currently my reputation is of a reliable worker. So rather than trying to explain that I wanted some time off it seemed eminently easier to pretend to be ill, easily done when you're roused from a deep sleep at 7.30. Should the council job fall through my reputation will be intact and if it doesn't then, well, it doesn't matter either way.

So, other than attacking Sam's DVD collection with some force, I've mostly been out in the garden. My theory that after clearing large areas of rubbish for the council sorting out our back garden would be a piece of piss has been somewhat proven true in that it now looks a lot more like a garden than it did a week ago. When I first approached it last Autumn all I could see was a mess and I had this idea of just digging random holes as a cheap alternative to going to the gym (I was working in a office job at the time and could feel the benefits of my summer on the farm rapidly shrinking into nothing). Having dug my first hole (now a vegetable patch) I started to see patterns out there, like satellite photos of lost Inca tribes, and the history of the garden became apparent. A few years back it was probably really nice but had fallen into neglect. The lawn had been mowed last year but the beds and especially the bottom half of the garden had not been touched. It was all a little too daunting and as winter cast it's dark and cold shadow I joined the previous tenants in thinking it was beyond hope.

My writing muse has vanished leaving quite a few half-written blog posts sitting on my hard drive, so here goes in point form:

Had a lovely evening at Matt and Anna's in Moseley on Saturday, which was needed as I was getting a little stir crazy. Matt has a mad collection of undergroundy French comics (or Bandes-Dessines) and it was something of a Hicksville moment being surrounded by loads of comics I'd never seen before. Was quite taken by the publisher Freon along with Flblb who published two of Matt's books. Strange that a Texan cartoonist living in England has only been published in French. But there you go.

Last week I was back at the NEC for a second job. I think I might be spending a lot of time there over the next few months. However, tomorrow I'm working for Birmingham City Council Environmental Services which means I'm on the bins! Well, I'm probably street cleaning but that's just as cool! Hopefully I'll be driving around in one of those little invalid carriages with big brushes ploughing through obstinate commoners as they wait for their bus. But as ever I will have no idea exactly what I'm doing until I'm doing it.

Finally got in touch, in a roundabout way, with an old Uni mate on Friday - told him to Google me for my email so if you're reading this James...

And that's about it.

A week back I decided to start composting. Like most of my gardening activities it's not so much because I want compost but that it's a thing to do. I recenty decided to start taking recycling seriously again having lapsed somewhat since moving to Birmingham, and this seemed like a useful part of this. So I bought a small tuppaware container (I would have re-used something but there was nothing suitable in the house) and started filling it with vegetable off-cuts and tea bags. After a week I was struck by how little I'd generated. My mum and sister's compost bowls seemed to fill up very quickly when I was living with them but mine just had a few carrot heads and a frightening quantity of tea. After a week it was giving off a rather nice sweet smell (contained by the lid I hasted to add) and I figured it was time to actually build the compost heap.

Just before Xmas the garden fence fell down. While I have the best intentions to do some work in the garden I've never gotten around to doing much more than digging a hole due to the nastiness of the weather so I kept putting off sorting the fence. The problem is it leads on to one of those alley things which people use as a short cut so it's a bit exposed. Not a big worry for us as I'm often up late but the neighbours recently "had a word". They're renovating next door and they don't actually live there so they were naturally a bit distressed to find empty beer cans in their garden. Breaking out my dormant tracker skills I can see a faint path leading from our missing fence, along the grass and into their land. So I say I'll sort it this week, and if I can't sort it myself I'll get the landlady to do it.

Sunday morning I woke up about eight-ish and couldn't move. Or rather I could move but it bloody hurt. The muscle leading from my left ear to my shoulder blade had frozen / spasmed / locked / whatever, it hurt every time I moved my head. This hasn't happened to me that often, the last time was August and one before a couple of years back, but the pain is so dramatic and unusual that the memory flooded back. So I spent most of the day in bed, head propped up by pillows dozing until being woken up by the pain, then dozing again.

Eventually I emerged in the evening and had the brainwave of asking Sam if she had any decent painkillers - the paracetamol I'd taken earlier had done bugger all and I wasn't about to go outside to the shops. Turned out she had some Tylenol left over from her US trip last summer so I downed a couple of them and within minutes the pain was subsiding, which was great but rather disconcerting. What the hell was in these things? Nothing I recognised (Acetaminophen anyone?) but it worked and I was able to do things like make toast and lean back into the sofa for a few hours. Took a couple more before going back to bed at 3.00am and woke up this morning feeling much better. Still a bit fragile and I'm not about to do anything energetic, but at least I'm not wincing every time I move my head.

This kind of neck pain is possibly the worst because every time you move your body your head adjusts to stay level. Trying to keep your head still (not level, but completely still) is nigh on impossible and it's an interesting lesson in how the body works. The only weird thing is I can't figure out how it happened. I hadn't done any lifting since Thursday and while Saturday night was spent in the pub there was bugger all movement done. Just sitting down drinking. No draft in the bedroom either.

Just a quick note to all the retards on my bus. When it rains heavily all the grit on the roads tends to be washed away. If it then immediately snows and settles and then becomes dark and freezing the roads will tend to be covered in ice. This will cause major traffic problems which is why it took us bloody ages to get home. It also explains why the bus didn't go through your shitty white-trash estate forcing you to walk all of 15 minutes extra. So don't go shouting and swearing at the driver you fucking ungrateful shit-stains on the underpants of creation.

In other news, it finally snowed in Birmingham today! Woo!

Am I getting too old for this? Or am I just out of practice?

Coupla days back chum Andy txtd wondering what I was up to for new year. Dreading the prospect of a pub in town I said I'd be staying in unless he could come up with a nice small, cozy party with interesting people away from all the chaos. Well, it just so happens...

And so it was off to Bearwood, coincidentally the same area of Brum I last lived in back in 1999-2000 before moving to London, to a house which, coincidentally, was directly opposite the house I used to live in. The party was mainly populated by musicians from Brum's simmering underground music scene but never got over 20 people in total. While they all knew each other really well they were very welcoming and I had a great time despite having the leftover of a cold dribbling away in my nose.

Midnight came and went and suddenly it was 3.00am, I'd drunk a shedload of Guinness, smoked a fair few fags and was starting to feel dopey. Next thing I knew I'm being tucked up on the sofa with a baby-pink blanket by a softly spoken chap making sure my glasses are okay as I'd fallen asleep with them gripped in my hand. Being one of those New Years parties where very few people actually leave until sometime the next afternoon the floor was pretty much covered with drunk bodies snoring and murmuring away and, while I had no evil thoughts at all, I wasn't exactly having a comfortable nights sleep. And then people started waking up. I staggered into consciousness around midday and stood, shellshocked, in the kitchen while one of the very nice hosts made sausage sandwiches for everyone. Eventually I managed to make a cup of tea though god knows how.

Now, I've had my fair share of hangovers - the second half of 2002 was pretty much one big orgy of drunkenness - but I can't say I remember ever feeling this retched. I didn't feel emotionally wrecked or have that cozy buzz of a night well spent - I just felt like death, and in the past I've been able to ride that with a smile.

Still, it was a great party, had some good chats and met some nice new interesting people, which was something I felt was missing from my industrial temping lifestyle. But that hangover... Jeez...

Side note: At midnight the TV was turned on to watch the Jools Holland Hootenanny thingy countdown to 2004 and I mentioned that it had been filmed three weeks previously, which was met with a not-that-interested "uh-huh" as if I was somehow ruining something vaguely important, in that it was necessary for the whole occasion for this to be live. It didn't really help my case that I'd read it on the weblog of a comedian most people can't quite place by name (though I rate him quite highly), but as I watched the show I started to doubt my sources. It seemed so real. All those semi-famous people really seemed to be having a really great time, the kind of really great time you only have on New Years Eve, ad I started to think that maybe Mr Herring was winding me up. The power of TV scares me sometimes.

When I collected my kitchen stuff from storage in October I was somewhat struck by the paucity of my crockery, in that I had very little. Four plates and a bowl, in fact. Two of the plates I'd bought from a charity shop in Selly Oak in 1995, another I'd taken (along with numerous other bits and bobs) from a house when moving out in 1997 and he fourth I have no idea. The many years of moving house on average once a year had taken their toll.

In so happened that my step mother used to run a B&B (in fact that's how my dad met her, but that's another story (and not a bad one as it happens, but I digress)) and recently decided to clear out a load of stuff from that era. And so I found myself offered a load of china, more than I've ever owned, in one fell swoop. Not only plates but two, count them, two tea pots (with jug!), and all in that lovely B&B white/blue style.

At my current rate this should last me until 2012.

Wow, a week without posting. Even with my current blogapathy (if you didn't notice it then I'm obviously just being self conscious about it) that's pretty bad.

Fact is I've been working for the first time since quitting the airport job a month back and while the job isn't so bad (stock picking food for M&S in a cold storage warehouse) and only lasts a week, it's in fucking Thatcham, between Newbury and Reading. Yes, I'm still living in Birmingham. I get picked up from the centre of town at 8.00am, work from 10 to 6 and get dropped off again at a little after eight. Add on my bus journey to and from home and I'm away for a little under 14 hours a day, every day since Friday. The pay is reasonably good (should net £345 before tax for five days brainless work) and tomorrow is the last day but right now I'm fucked. Six hours a day traveling is not good, especially as I find is really hard to get comfortable on coach seats. Moan moan, bloody moan. All ends tomorrow, then Xmas joy (major family stuff for nearly a week!) , then a nice short period of no-work, then back on the temp wagon again.

Here's a question. I know I've got a small band of loyal readers out there. What do you want me to write about? Do you want tales of surreal temp work? The minutiae of my daily life? Strident but ill-thought-out opinions? Diatribes on the role of the outsider-non-artist railing against but dependent upon modern consumerist society? More of those tutorial thingies I started dabbling in? More photos? Brutally honest dark moments of the soul?

This is kinda important to me as I've been losing my way with this blog since moving to Birmingham. Actually, since stopping the Farmblog really. I've toyed with splitting it into multiple blogs, stripping it down to an LMG style linklog, starting up a new, anonymous diary blog somewhere or even just scrapping the whole thing and starting again, but I think the best thing to do is just keep going only with a better focus on what I'm doing this for.

When I read a non-specific mish-mash blog like my own I tend to read it selectively. skimming through some posts (for example ones on poetry) and dwelling on others (for example ones on music) and I imagine people do the same with mine. So, please let me know what aspects of this blog you actually read, either in the comments or, if you prefer, by email.

Thanks. (And sorry for rambling. I'm very tired...)

I'm quitting the job at the airport at the end of this week.

Broadband is now go on both computers.

The boiler is being replaced today so hopefully we'll have heating tonight.

Went out on the piss last weekend for the first time in months and had a wonderful time.

Registered a new domain last week though haven't done anything with it yet.

Spent a significant amount of time recently watching the extended edition LOTR Two Towers DVD.

Details to follow. Probably.

It'll be interesting to see the long term effect my niece, Isobel, has on her wider family. Suddenly there's a topic that all the direct relatives of my sister and brother-in-law have a passionate interest in. It's a bit like we've all been drifting around, sometimes crossing paths, sometimes not, and suddenly there's this powerful tractor beam pulling us, quite willingly, into it's orbit. She can't speak and it's hard to detect anything other than base emotions and thoughts, but Isobel is the most powerful thing I've seen enter the family in a long while.

Which made her Naming Ceremony all the more fascinating. I should explain: a naming ceremony is basically a christening only without the God stuff. Bluntly, it's an opportunity for those close to the child to state the bleeding obvious in public - "I promise to look after her", etc - but sometimes you need to state the bleeding obvious in order for it to sink in.

Sorry, couldn't resist.

The boiler in our house started leaking sometime during Friday night. Plumber came round Saturday lunchtime and condemned it. Not only that but he disconnected it as well. Which seemed a bit harsh, but then I suppose it is essentially a water based bomb. That night I was away in Banbury (for my niece's non-denominational naming ceremony - more later) so I managed to have a shower on Sunday morning. Sunday night I was back and, while it was cold, it wasn't that bad. This morning was a bit tough, pulling on freezing trousers and putting on my hat before going out, but no more tough than normal. This evening the new boiler was supposed to be fitted. But it wasn't. And there's a possibility it might not be fitted til the weekend as it has to be done in working hours, when Sam and I are working. Hopefully the landlady will sort it out earlier, but it's probably best to assume the worst.

And so, after 50-odd hours of no heating the house is now cold. Completely cold. The novelty is rapidly wearing off, though at the very least I'll get an early night - the duvet looks very appealing. It reminds me of the first few weeks on the farm in that bleeding cold caravan, which might explain why I'm suddenly having this urge to write blog entries. And, to be honest, while it's easy to moan about this situation, especially as I'm paying rent now, it's actually not all that bad. So far.

Oh yeah, the pussy. Macy the cat has been really annoying this last week, demanding attention no matter what and following my fingers no matter what I'm doing (typing being the worst one). Not only has the cold slowed her down a bit but she's proving her worth as a lap warmer. Cats rock.

Traffic congestion is, I acknowledge, a complicated subject, but for some blinding empirical evidence just get a bus on the first day of half term and see how whole chunks of minutes are swiped off your journey. Could it be that banning parents from driving their kids to school could solve all our problems? Do school busses still exist?

A nice weekend, slightly spoiled by the onset of the seasonal cold/flu thingy, but nice all the same. Started off with a brief appearance at the Birmingham comics pub meet for the first time in a few years and the realisation that we started these monthly meets sometime around 1996 and they're still going strong. Good to be back with my old gang.

Then off the London on the tedious Silverlink train to visit chum Kath in Whitechappel to pick up my iMac which she borrowed over the summer. As I don't drive we had some fun figuring out how I was going to carry it back on the train. I wrapped it in cardboard and a jumper then put it in a bin liner in case it rained. Then using a piece of string constructed a sling to go over one shoulder. Boy those old CRT iMacs are heavy and that carry handle on the back is a real misnomer. Still I managed it, once again telling myself I really really must learn to drive this year.

It was good to have my baby back (there's some kind of weird attachment you make to a machine through which you live your life for a number of years) though it did feel like an old coat that doesn't quite fit any more. OS9 is getting close to being an obsolete operating system which it didn't feel like a year ago, although this might have been exacerbated by having only 1.5GB free space on the hard drive, again something that seemed immense in 1999 but now is just puny. With any luck I'll be running OSX on it in a couple of month time and be plugging in a nice big portable drive. Along with the projected iBook purchase this means I won't be going out much over the next few months, but I can deal with that. I think I've had an eventful enough year to make up for sitting in for the winter.

At ten past four Concorde was due to take off and leave Birmingham so we all went back out into the cold (the first really cold day of the new winter, in case you didn't notice it) to watch. As luck would have it the plane was parked right outside the hanger where I work in perfect profile and looked a lot more dramatic even than when it landed. At first nothing was going on - Concorde was surrounded by relatively small vehicles and lots of people in yellow hi-viz jackets all doing airport things.

Suddenly there was a low murmur as the engines were fired up and a shimmer of heat, about as long as the engines themselves, emerged from the rear of the plane. Over the next ten minutes the volume gradually increased along with the length of the shimmer until it was longer than the plane itself. As the noise got so loud we had to shout over it Concorde started moving forwards and turned away from us. And this is where it got really odd. As the rear of the plane turned in our direction, so that the wave of heat blasted us like a really large hair dryer (this is from a good 500 feet away), the sound dropped to nothing. It was totally unreal. These two massive Rolls-Royce jet engines made not one decibel of sound when they were pointing right at us. Nothing. And then as the plane continues turning the noise came back louder than before. No-one there knew why this was and if anyone knows PLEASE let me know!

Concorde then began the long taxi to the end of the runway and out of out sight for five minutes, then suddenly a sound that was both familiar yet completely new to me in it's intensity as it began to accelerate into view. It was the kind of volume that envelopes you rendering your senses pointless and overwhelmed. I imagine this is what an explosion is like, only this was controlled and extended. Flames licked out of the exhaust as the plane lifted off the runway and began the ascent, and as the noise faded into the distance it seemed to get even more intense.

Wow. Bloody wow!

All very exciting at work today. As you may know, Concorde was taken out of service recently and before it goes to the scrapheap / museum at the end of the month it's doing a tour of all the British international airports, starting with Birmingham! So at 11.40 we all popped out to the front of the hanger and stood there waiting. After a bit someone announced it was going to be another 20 minutes so we all went back into the warm for a bit. Twenty minutes later and we're all outside again shivering and waiting. Suddenly there's a slightly different and somewhat louder aircraft engine noise and Concorde gently glides overhead and into the distance. We stand there for a bit longer wating for the actual landing which seems to take forever, but I guess Concorde has a wide turning circle. Then suddenly it was there, gracefully landing right in front of me. I'd never seen it in the 'flesh' before and while it was essentially just a plane it was still rather special. Smaller than you'd expect and very fragile looking compared to all the jumbos about the place. It'll be here for the day and then off again at four. And, yes, I forgot my bloody camera...

BBC news report.

The cat had an epileptic fit today. Macy is Sam's cat and comes with the house, something I'm very happy about as I've never been able to have a pet in while renting and my somewhat transient lifestyle hasn't really allowed it, plus the contact with animals on the farm had awoken something in me.

Although having said that it's mainly been babies these last couple of years. Anyway, my old housemate and good mate in general, James, just let it be known he's getting married at some point. So congrats to him and Abby.

Unfortunately I'm bloody knackered at the end of a long week to write much more. I never thought a desk job would be so tiring but because my body is doing bugger all it's not tired so I haven't been getting to sleep all week while my brain is fried from data entry. I've even been watching cable TV, it's been that bad... Otherwise everything is fucking-A and proceeding nicely to some celestial plan of which I approve. Tomorrow I pick up the rest of my stuff from mum (couldn't carry stuff like winter coat, spare sheets, etc last time) while visiting the niece in Banbury, and then on Sunday I'm reunited with my iMac which I lent to chum Kath in March so she could set herself up as a professional photographer. That being accomplished I can have it back, which is great as I'm suffering not-having-my-own-computer blues.

And then we're going to get broadband...

Left the house at 10.00am and four an a half hours later I was in Brentford, west London. Bear in mind I never had to wait more than 10 minutes for a bus/train because it could have taken much longer. But then the Silverlink train service from Brum to London charges a sensible fare for a reason - it spends two hours meandering around the shires before deciding it might just bumble on down to Euston.

Feeling quite sorted at the moment. As well as having my own room in the house (I was expecting to be on the sofa until the weekend but the old tenant was able to move out on Wednesday) I've also managed to get paid employment of the full time variety until January. Go me!

It's hasn't really sunk in yet, but then I arrived after dark and didn't really see much so I could be anywhere really. I did get a quick look at the new Selfridges building in the Bull Ring from the bus and it didn't look as big as I was expecting, though still quite impressive. Tomorrow I'll be going into the city centre job hunting so it'll probably hit me then.

I'm back living in Birmingham after three+ years away. And it's mine, in that I'm paying rest for half of it, the first time I've paid rent since February. This chapter of the big adventure is finally over and the next one begins. And it's all very exciting.

I have and it made me very happy indeed. So happy I had to clamp my hand over my mouth and leave the room to bang (quietly) on the wall.

You could sell tickets for this kind of thing...

Yes, baby Isobel is home, finally, and it's all very odd. For example dinner was disrupted as she needed feeding just as Jeff and I had cooked the food. And then it was nappy time. And then more feeding. Food back in the oven. And then there's these strange noises that sound a bit like a cat only quieter and with occasional gurgles. No raging screams though. Yet.

Yesterday, after a week of waiting and false starts, I finally got some work out of the temp agency. The lack of work was really a blessing as I've been able to play dogsbody for Lucy and Jeff about the house but it did also feel good to be off earning again. Only the shift was from ten to six. That's 10pm to 6 am. Night shift joy awaited. Luckily I had some advance warning so, after visiting Isobel and Lucy at the hospital with new step-grandma April in the afternoon, I caught a couple of hours kip before setting out.

Early this monring, about 4.00am, I heard a hurried comotion coming from downstairs, then the door slammed and it was quiet again. Getting up later all the lights are on, the curtains are drawn and the house is empty. There's a definite absence of bag from the room with the cot in it.

Putting two and two together I find myself at something of a loss, being under strict-ish instructions not to tell anyone should something like this occur until such time as it's all over. So I tidy up. And wait.

Just got the text: "Isobel May 7 lb 2 1252"

I'm an Uncle.

Currently in Winchester procrastinating when I should be sorting my stuff out into two piles, one for the next few weeks and one to follow later. Will go to Banbury tonight to stay with Lucy and Jeff and the nearly-baby until the end of the month. While there will do a bit more temping. Then on Sept 30th I go to Brum and move in with Sam where I will finally, for the first time since March, have my own room. After the elation of all that I'll start looking for work in the 2nd city.

Around then I'll turn into an Uncle, at which time my mum will drive up to Banbury to see her grandchild. As she does this she'll bring the 2nd pile of things up with her. I will pop down to see my niece/nephew and take the stuff back up. All that then remains is a couple of trips to London to get the iMac and some essentially from the storage box in Brenford, probaby one last trip to Winch, and I'm sorted.

Hopefully this plan will have no more revisions. But I'm not holding my breath...

So, here I am in Horton Heath, to the north-east of Southampton and just east of Eastleigh where I lived from 1992 to 1995. It's kinda in the middle of nowhere, especially if like me you don't drive, but I've been borrowing Dave's bike which has been a godsend. I didn't realise how restricting not having my own transport (or a decent public transport network - Londoners, stop moaning) can be and as soon as I got on it a big grin came over my face.

In an email exchance with a friend I mentioned that I didn't have anywhere to live in Birmingham right now. Friend was confused - she thought the flat with Sam was all fine and kosher. Oh, it is. But I don't move in until the end of the month. I'm homeless for the next two weeks.

This last month or so I've only been able to think ahead a few days at a time, which is probably a good thing because if I had to plan further I'd probably go insane from all the variables. So, for those interested, here's the current situation...

Right, about to leave Banbury for Winchester where I'll be staying until the weekend. After Sunday I dunno where I'll be. Well, I have an idea but no specifics.

Well, being a dustman has definitely been a good experience so far. In fact so much so I'm seriously considering it as a job when I get to Birmingham. The job is task-and-finish, meaning I get paid for an eight hour day no matter when we finish, which is normally after four or five hours. The day starts at 6.30 so I'm usually finished and by 1.00pm or so. The first few days were totally exhausting but that was as much from the early start (alarm goes off at five...) as from the work which is no worse than on the farm. And it'll keep me fit, which is no bad thing as I was feeling the benefits of the farm slowly ebbing away. But most importantly it'll be like doing a part time job for full time money, freeing up the afternoon and evening to work on my computing stuff, which is what this whole malarkey is all about.

More tales of being a bin man to follow! Bet you can't wait!

For some reason I haven't been in a writing mood this week. Can't think why but I suspect a fully loaded RSS reader has probably kept me more that satisfied. Especially with the recent explosion of sideblog/linkfarm/low-threshold linkblogs that are cropping up everywhere. Here's a project for y'all. Grab an RSS reader (Newzcrawler is okay for PCs, NetNewsWire for the Mac) and load it up with all the linkblogs listed on Cameron's Overstated blog. Then watch your browsing quality rocket. Gary kindly noted I was blogging well and this is why. Try it.

That aside I've been working hard which is probably the other reason for no writing. The cable pulling job turned out to be very dull but extremely tiring with a fair dollop of emotional stress. But it's over now. I'll probably write about it later if it still seems interesting. On Friday I worked at an old people's home cleaning the toilets and emptying bins. Now that was fun!

And now I'm off to Banbury to stay with sister for a couple of weeks. Then it's probably back to Winchester to dig up mum's garden for a few days (she wants a patch of lawn to, g'wan guess, do yoga on) before finally making it to Brum on or around September 14th.

So, that's me news. Or some of it. I'm not sure how frequent my blogging will be over the next month but I'm pretty sure it'll be less that this one.

Ooh, got an early birthday present today! Mum bought be a new mobile as my old one was physically dying. I would have kept it if the keys worked, the vibrate was consistent (ie worked), it could get a regular signal and the battery lasted longer that 18 hours. But since it's my main form of communication right now it's kind of a necessity. So I now own a wee clamshell mobile. It's tiny! The size of two fag lighters! I keep losing it in my pocket. It does make a hell of a racket though, blurting out deranged harpsichord tunage at every opportunity, but I've managed to shut it up most of the time.

So, fun there. Wish someone would call me on the thing though... Or send me a text... I'll be able to reply now.

Still got a cold and I was up at 6.15 for work this morning. Same again tomorrow.

Everything is fine and great and stuff except this bloody thick head.

Anyway, in absence of me being able to actually write anything of sense, here's the collected emails of my young friend Antoinette as she backpacks around India. Ah, kids eh?

I was going to write all about my exciting weekend but I've come down with this rather tedious cold with the runny nose and thick head. Which is an arse.

Last week at Caption Bryan Talbot gave his very illuminating slide-show talk about the creation of The Tale Of One Bad Rat. In it he recounted taking reference photographs around Westminster Bridge in London and getting seriously questioned by the police because he obviously wasn't a tourist. We all laughed as he showed a photo of a police woman radioing his driving licence details to check he wasn't as terrorist planning to bomb the houses of parliament.

Same thing happened to me today. Well, kinda.

I'd been avoiding this because for the fourth summer in a row it seems every UK blog is moaning about the heat but since it is the hottest day since records began it's probably worth noting. My heat story? Well, I walked out of John Lewis in Southampton (where my sister was buying baby stuff ) at midday and the sudden change between chilled air conditioning and the concrete heat of the car park was just like Houston. Not slightly like it or similar, but exactly the same. For a minute there I thought I was visiting my dad (who's lived there since 1980). What country am I in? What's going on? And on the way there and back on the motorway the wind blowing through the windows was warm. Not just "not-cold" but hairdryer warm. Crispy fried road kill I'd imagine. Thankfully my mum's house is old enough to have quite thick walls and the back rooms are an oasis of refrigeration. That said, this attic (where the computer lives) is dog-crushingly hot.

So I'm going through the cat and mouse game of getting temp work - takes me back a good eight years or so - with P&D. What with it being August all the students are also looking for temp work and the suspicion of bad timing on my part is starting to look justified. Still, early days. The thing with these agencies is you start at the bottom of the pile and keep pestering them till they move you up and give you a job. Usually takes a couple of days.

I'm in Winchester for a bit longer looking for temp work to build up a bit more cash before moving to Brum. There's a seriously good possibility of a room in Kingstanding within my budget being available towards the end of September. So, with that in mind as the target the plan is to spend August in Winch earning cash and then September in Brum looking for work and moving towards moving in. (Lock up your sofas!)

And without going into reasons and motivations, that's about it!

As you know I'm moving to Birmingham in August. The last time I was flat hunting the blogosphere came to the rescue so there's no reason it might no again.

If anyone has or knows of a spare room is Birmingham for rent please !

I'm going to start looking the week of August 4th and ideally would want to move in on the weekend of August 16th, though this is flexible.

Cheers!

As some will know, while on the farm I grew a quite prodigious beard. Just before it came off I took a photo. Here it is.

Well, I've finished WWOOFing. A little over three months spent doing what at the time seemed a very drastic thing to do. And it's over. Reflecdtions will follow in due course once I've thought about it all a bit. Right now, though, I'm at my Mum's house in Winchester looking after it while she's away and, to be honest, I'm a little lost.

I'm finishing on the farm on July 26th. A bit earlier than originally planned (Sept) but it's time to move on. Move on to Birmingham to be precise! I'll be spending a week in Winchester sorting out my bags (muddy boots out, clean shirt in) then, after Caption on the weekend of the 2nd, I'll be off to Brum. Plan is to rent a cheap room and get a part time job, still live the simple life, and develop my computing skills.

So if anyone knows of a cheap room in Birmingham, preferably south of the centre, please let me know!

(Farmblog to be updated with reasons why, etc, after the 26th)

Thanks to everyone I stayed with or met up with over the last week in London. It was quite humbling to be fed, watered and housed so generously. Not much more I can say, other than thanks and I had a great time.

Expect more about my London trip in the next Farmblog batch!

Right, that's enough computer stuff for the time being. I'll be off back to the Island then. Remember, the Farmblog has been updated, so go read that.

The next update will be on or around June 20th. If you're a chum in London, I'm spending the following week (21st to 27th) in the big smoke and would love to meet up with people, especially any I didn't see before I went.

I will have email acccess via the Isle of Wight libraries and will check it at weekends, so it's worth emailing me now. I might blog, I might not.

Thanks for all the emails and comments. A few have asked for the address of the farm but I'm reluctant to put it online. If you want to send me something, email first and I'll give you the addy.

I'm back on the computer for the next few days. The farmblog is on its way - probably Saturday lunchtime I reckon - but I just wanted to shout out "I'm here!"

Off back to the Island now. I think I'll be back on a computer mid June, possibly going to London on the 21st. Emails and comments on the farmblog more than welcome!

Currently on the train to Winchester. The Banbury adventure is over. Other than the enjoyment of staying with family, it was an interesting experience of tedium, or rather of low expectations. As I have alluded to, I dug vegetable patches and put up a fence which I then painted (or rather we painted, but you get the idea). These were the sorts of things "normal" people do of a weekend whereas for me this was my job, full time, for a week. In return I was fed and watered and given a bed. A fair trade.

It's an interesting shift I'm making. In the past I've wanted my job to be stimulating - needed in fact as I was spending most of my waking hours doing it or travelling to it. And I got frustrated when either I wasn't stimulated or I felt my energies weren't being appreciated by the corporation I was giving them to. So I got out of that cycle.

This new cycle is interesting because, while I'm doing work that is appreciated, it's definitely not mentally stimulating. It's physically stimulating and I feel very good for doing it, but while I'm out there digging in the mud I'm not having to think about it. It's similar to when I was in the bookshop doing returns all day - my job involved putting books in boxes and sending them off. Not much thought involved and a fair bit of exercise. Compare this to dealing with customers which required a bit of thought, but not too much and definitely not enough to seriously engage the mind. If I'm going to be working I either want to be using my brain properly or not at all, and since I want to be using my brain for me and for the things I care about, I'd rather not use my brain for my job in the slightest.

And what's interesting is my mind is clearer at the moment than it has been for a long time. Unskilled manual labour - it's bread and butter to the thinking man.

An easy day today - not much work done all told. Painted a third of the fence and that was about it for the garden. Also introduced Lucy to the Sponge Monkeys, which went down well. Then it was off to Chipping Campden for dinner with Dad after a brisk walk around the village where I took photos of lambs. There will be lambs where I'm going. Yay!

My work here in Banbury is done. Tomorrow I make my way to Winchester for a week with Mother, setting her up with my PC and doing last minute things before going off to the Island (such as getting gardening gloves).

I may well post next week, I may well not, but make sure you sign up to the Announce List all the same. When I come back from the IoW I'll send an email to it to let you know the journal has been updated.

The first problem with this new journal has hit me. It's not very interesting. Yesterday I went in the garden and dug around in the mud with a spade. Today I went in the garden, put up three sections of a fence and dug around in the mud with a spade. I took photos of the fence and the mud. Fascinating. Hopefully the Isle of Wight will be more stimulating that a back garden in Banbury.

This evening we went to the pub. Jeff's workplace were having one of those dos where everyone in the company drinks beer and socialises - a pretty good idea when they all work in small teams that don't meet face to face - and Lucy and me tagged along. Chatted to a guy who used to work on Leadenhall Street just opposite the Market where my old bookshop is and we traded stories about the City. Small world. He told a story about when there was a bomb in the City at midnight about 10 years ago. When he came to work the next morning there was a pyramid of glass and office furniture 100ft high in the square outside the CGU building. I can imagine it but at the same time I can't. He said he was pissed off about Americans going on about the Twin Towers - we've had our own versions over the years (think about Manchester in the 90s).

On getting home from the pub I jumped online for a couple of hours. Three emails and no comments on the site. One weblog had the tag "probably the last link I'll grab from Pete - sob". Have I left? It looks that way.

Tomorrow I'll be painting a fence. Expect extensive coverage of this event...

If you know you're getting old when your friends start having babies, what does it mean when they start having babies for the second time?

Not that I'm complaining. Kids are cool. My niece/nephew is now a visible bump (which is not that hard as my sister is thinner than a rake...)

So, I get to a computer for the first time in five days and find three personal emails and no comments on my site.

Looks like I really have left the building them...

I've started a practice journal on the handheld and will upload it before going off to the farm - it'll give you something to read in the meanwhile.

Y'all do realise I'll be back weblogging again one day, don't you? I know six months in a long time in blogistan but I will return. Probably...

Here's a question. I told someone about my blog tonight in a pub in Banbury and she said she'd check it out (shortish lady with a 4 year old daughter, just relocated from the Midlands - is this you?). Are you reading this blog because we got talking about it in a pub and either I wrote down the address for you or you remembered or asked someone who knew me later? If so, identify yourself. I suspect the total will be close to zero.

Watched Ocean's 11 last night. It was okay.

Today it was brought home me something that I kinda always knew but had never really acknowledged. While I might have bundles of energy, a desire to do stuff and a fair bit of strength (lugging books for years does that), I am not, and have not been for a while, very fit.

After the digging yesterday I went to bed nice and knackered. Today I didn't wake up until lunch time and I felt like shit, both physically and mentally. In the morning it had rained heavily bringing a new reality to the prospect of working outdoors. Yesterday was sunny and warm and I worked up a sweat. Today was cold and wet. The prospect of working in such conditions went totally against my city ways.

All this, combined with feeling something of a failure for not getting up early, put me in something of a downer. Reality is an arse sometimes. So I went shopping.

The Banbury army surplus shop ("Troopers of Banbury") is one of those great shops that manages to cram everything into a tiny space - boots piled up in one corner, jackets hanging from the ceiling - total chaos to the untrained eye and probably oppressive if you're not a fan on combat gear. I am a fan on combat gear. £70 later and I've got boots, trousers, waterproofs and socks. I'd spent a whole day traipsing around Camden and the surrounding area looking for this stuff at a decent price and failed. Here it all was. Result.

Next I went to find Next where Lucy had ordered a load of maternity clothes which I was to pick up. Unlike Troopers it was not on a street but in a shopping centre which it took me ages to navigate. I was reminded why I'm bugging out of some aspects of society - I really don't like these places.

Back home and after some food I cracked on with the garden. Wood and soil stuff had been delivered so it was time to complete the raised vegetable patch. Actually building something was very satisfying and I cracked on through the rain and hail to complete it.

I may have only done half a days work today but I feel less knackered than yesterday and rather more alert. Coming here for a week before starting on the farm was definitely a good idea. Once I get to the Isle of Wight I hopefully won't be quite as useless as I was this morning...

Currently I'm in Banbury, Oxfordshire, staying with my sister Lucy and her husband Jeff in their new house for a week. The main reason for being here (other than to visit) is to work on their garden so that when I get to the farm in a fortnight I'm not completely soft and crap. This has already proved itself to be a good idea.

Woke up at 9.00 and by 10.00 was in the garden with Lucy talking about what they want to do. I happened to watch for the first time the television program Home Front last week and, for my sins, it struck a chord. The plan is to dig two vegetable patches and a flower bed, and then construct a new section of fence to give some privacy - today was just a digging day.

After an hour of digging up the turf of the first patch, I stopped for a cuppa and read my book. Soon I was fast asleep. On waking at 2.00pm I had some lunch and dug the other bed and half the patch. At first I didn't think to use gloves and now have a large stigmata on my right palm, with a matching blister on the left. I'm also completely knackered, which is why this entry is somewhat less than inspired.

It will get better, that much I'm sure of, and already I'm enjoying it. But right now I just want to sleep.

The PC is going into storage tonight. I will have computer access for the next fortnight, first at my sister's in Banbury, and then at my mum's in Winchester, but this is the last post from London.

I'll probably be going for a quiet drink tonight. If you're at a loose end and have my mobile number, feel free to text me!

Didn't make the demo. After a late night and quite restless sleep, I woke up today feeling shite with a dickey eye which is still hurting. I also realised I'd forgotten to take my medication for at least a couple of days (can't really remember when as the alst few days have been a bit mixed up). So, hmm.

Off to meet up with Brett tonight to go to a comedy club in Ealing and then stay over at his. I think the break will be good.

A very productive day this is turning out to be. I was worried I was going to spend the day faffing and not get anything done, but I picked up the phone and with some trepidation phoned my first choice farm. It was so easy! I was expecting some kind of interview thing but Maggie, the nice lady who runs the farm, was so completely open and relaxed I thought I'd missed something. So I'm starting at Tao Bridge Farm on the Isle of Wight on April 13th. That gives me a couple of weeks in London to say goodbye to people, a week with my Mum to sort out her yoga website, and possibly a week with my sister / dad, or somewhere else, and then I'm off.

The farm is here. I've wanted to live by the sea for a while now and this'll do fine methinks.

This is actually happening!

Without going into details, which would not be correct form online (at least not at the moment) I have finished working for Waterstone's as of today. I will be paid for the four weeks of notice given (2 weeks to go) but will not turn up for work.

I feel strangely numb, not in a bad way, but not in a celebratory way either. I guess I expected to end my bookselling career with a bang of some sorts but it's just kinda faded out. Hmm.

So, two weeks to sort out the next 6 months with no distractions. Win win all round I guess.

This weekend I paid my karmic dues after press-ganging my mates into helping shift my stuff around London by helping my sister and bro-in-law, Lucy and Jeff, move into their new house. And boy do they have a lot of stuff - a truck-full in fact. On Saturday morning we were cheerfully lifting furniture into the truck like laughing gnomes but by dusk, as the van emptied it's load, we were suffering. But I feel good.

This lunch time, as I sat in their new garden smoking a fag in the sun, it occurred to me how at peace I felt. Whether this was the nice weather and the calm of Banbury as opposed to the excitable chaos of central London, I wouldn't like to say. Many people have asked me if it's London I'm escaping from, implying they want to escape from London themselves, but I honestly think I'd like to stay here if it was possible and intend to return at some point. I think it was more the work that did it. I've always been happiest doing hard manual labour, be it a gardening job or refitting / closing down a bookshop. It's an exercise thing, only with a purpose. Lets the mind settle. I'm looking forward to farm work in a perversely masochistic way.

Oh, my sister's pregnant, by the way. I found out a few weeks back but couldn't say anything because it was too soon to make public, but she's 12 weeks in now and there's a little bump. I'm going to be an Uncle! Woo! Can't wait!

If anyone ever needs someone to do farcical crisis management, just give me a call. I'm a fecking expert.

So, Saturday is the day I'm moving stuff into storage. After being up for 24 hours on Friday I decided I would have a couple of drinks after work before going home to finish packing stuff up ready for the morning when James and myself would move it to Brentford, in West London, in a van. Then Antoinette, who worked at the shop over Xmas, turned up who I hadn't seen for a month, so I stayed for a bit longer to have a chat. To cut a long story short I wound up walking home at 3am. Oops.

Next morning I met James to get the van, finished boxing up and we loaded the van, me with a hangover, him feeling a bit under the weather. Kath, needless to say, didn't turn up and none of you buggers responded to my cry for help. But we got the van loaded and were off from East London by 2.30pm. The storage place closed at 4.00pm. No problem, I though. By 3.30 we're on the North Circular approaching Finchley. Things are not looking good. Suddenly I have the revelation that I might have the phone number for the storage place on my mobile, and yes, Access Storage is there, so I phone them. Oh, we close at 6.00, they say, so no problem. Are you sure you've got me down for a box, I ask. Um, no. Wrong company. I phone them back soon after. Do they have a free storage box? Yes, but it's twice as expensive. I'll take it anyway. But they need two forms of ID, one with an address on. I don't have that on me. I can bring it in tomorrow though. Is that okay? Yes. But the only address ID I have is for my old place where I haven't lived for a month, so I lie on the form and tell them I'll be moving soon (plausible since I'm putting stuff in storage) and I'll bring in new ID when I get it.

And so the stuff gets into storage and, bar navigating through Richmond and Wandsworth into Southwark, the deed is done. Although I'll have to move it all to a cheaper place soon, but that won't be a hassle as both ends will have flat-beds and the like.

So, this stage is finally over. Now onto the next stage. I got the stuff through from WWOOF and there's a promising farm on the Isle of Wight which I will contact next week, and I've ordered a book called Diggers and Dreamers, which sounds wanky enough to be useful. But right now all my possessions (bar this computer obviously) fit in a rucksack and one of those long tubular army kit-bag things. Which is a nice feeling.

If you think I need punishment, I'm helping my sister and bro-in-law move next weekend - they need someone who knows how to load a van, and I am most certainly than man.

Woo!

In short, the flat that Anna were planning to move into fell through. This, on top of being signed off again for the ol' panic attacks made me think "aw, fuck it. I'm just going to get rid of all my stuff and run away". And then I thought about it and figured it could actually be a positive thing. And then I thought about it some more and definitely decided it was a positive thing!

So, once my notice time is served I'm going to work on an organic farm through the WWOOF organisation. The deal is a farm provides you with a room and food and in return you work the fields. I’m putting all my stuff into storage (just in case I change my mind in 6 months time) and going for it. Currently I'm staying at friends houses, thanks to the goodness of their wonderful hearts, and then, once the details are sorted, I'm off.

New life, new beginning, new road, new new new new!

I've talked this through with a number of friends and family who have all said it’s a good idea, so it's not like I'm running blindly into this. I'll admit to being pretty scared last weekend when the reality set it, but since then, and definitely since handing in my notice, I've felt better than in a long time.

I'll write more about this later (currently in a library on my lunch hour), regarding BugPowder and other bits and bobs of my life I need to offload / downscale my involvement in, and I’ll send out emails with more personal-type info to friends and family, but it's a relief to be able to announce it finally.

I plan to keep the weblog going and keep this web address and email, and I'm going to hang on to the digital camera. An idea is to keep a notebook (the paper kind) on my and make notes, then type them up once a week or so when I can get access to a computer. Blogging, or journaling (which I seem to be referring to it as more and more of late) has stood me well over the last three years so there's no reason to stop now.

So. Onwards!

Later: fixed them. All nice and higher-res now!

Got here yesterday at about 4.00pm and promptly fell asleep on the sofa. Woke up and hour later and moved to the bedroom, where I fell as