Day 337: The Czech is in the post

I have watched a number of films since I last gave some film opinions on this blog, so here comes a much needed update.

Open Water: This is simply the worst film that I have ever seen ever. This was in the DVD charts in Asda which meant people had actually gone out an bought it - how they must have regretted it later. I am glad I only rented it. The only reson it gets a 15 certificate is because of the nudity near the beginning and there was absolutely no other reson for it being there. Apart from that nothing happens apart from 2 people being in the water for a while. What a boring film.

The Village: I really enjoyed this film and I am glad I bought it rather than rented it. I pretty much got the twist early on, as I also did with "The Others", but it didn't detract from the enjoyment at all. When I watched the 6th sense I didn't get it until right at the very end and promptly had to watch the film over again right away. I would like to live in some sort of village like that (but in Sweden).

The Bourne Supremacy: The reason I ended up renting Open Water was because my local video shop was all out of this film. The following weekend I tried to rent this again but they were still all out. There was nothing else worth renting so I ended up buying it, and fortunately it was very enjoyable. I had rented the first film in this set, but can't remember much about it, so I'll probably need to go out and buy that too.

Gorky Park: This film is one of my all time favourates of all time - I may have even mentioned this fact to a few people before. Apart from the fact that it is really good, it is even better because some of it is set (and filmed) in Sweden. In fact some of the bits that are set in Russia where also filmed in Sweden. When Adrian and I went to see Sting play at Skansen a few years ago we went to Sturebadet for a sauna and a massage on the Sunday. Adrian commented that it was one of the nicest health spas he had been to. One of the stiking featutes was the main room which contained a swimming pool. Some years after this I bought the DVD of Gorky Park (which I had first seen in the ABC cinema in Harrogate with Adrian and a few other friends) and on watching it I noticed that the scenes set in the Russian health Spa looked very familiar to me. So the next moring I had a look at the Sturebadet website and low and behold that was where they had filmed those scenes. I wonder wether we will get chance to pay a visit again on our next trip in may.

While typing this post Al mentioned that he had a friend from Prague and added that he was his Czech mate, but I said "no you've got that wrong, don't you mean flat mate?"

A brief history of time

I've been thinking. Not very hard or anything, I've got a hangover to
support after all.
While reading a random blog entry somewhere, there was something in it
about checking out and old school website. This set me thinking about
my old schools. These didn't have any of those new fangled website
gizmos, and both primary and secondary school have been demolished in
the last few years to make space for houses. I finished both primary
and secondary school as dux, which didn't really
mean anything to me at the time, being used to such plaudits. Now,
however, it seems that I'd left my mark (albeit simply my name and a
date on a board in the assembly hall) and now that it's gone, it
actually saddens me a little.

ps This posting is by "The Mighty Al^TM", but he had problems posting it due to him being an iknternet light weight (as mentioned in a previous posting of mine) - so I had to post it on his behalf.

gmail

I seem to have the proverbial 'hunners' of gmail invites, if there's
anyone out there still looking.....

auto erotic fixations

I'm looking for a new car. Oh wait, the first thing is - Dom has been
moaning at me for not putting anything up here. It's not been a lack
of interest, honestly, it's just been a busy old time and I'm a bit
tired and lazy. Right, the options appear to be -
Mazda RX-8
Audi A4 S-line
Jaguar X-Type
These are very different cars, so I chose them specifically to get a
feel for what I felt was important to me in a car. Only thing I
learned after a weekend of dealers was that I amd tired and lazy. So
there.

I've been watching the news a bit recently. It's mainly been arguments
about what constitutes genecide and whether it'll hurt someone's
feelings if you accuse them of genocide and, in actual fact, they're
only guilty of mass murder. I remember I was once in trouble for being
in a fight when I had actually just been bullying the boy and kicked
his head in for no reason. I would have termed that as assault, rather
than a fight, and I was hurt by the implication.*
* none of that was true, obviously, just an anecdote to help the point get over.

Our good friend Air disappeared from the project a month back. He's
left a gap and I'd hoped to catch up with him at the weekend, but he's
off skiing. I'm really busy for the next few weeks too, so it'll be a
while. I need to spend more time catching up with friends, I know
that, but I just don't have the time/energy.

So, that's why I haven't been writing, dear reader. It's not you, it's
me, I just need a bit of space...

Day 329: A temple in the sky to climb up to

Adrian and I booked a holiday to Crete. I think we tried to get a few more people interested, but it ended up with just the two of us going. We got a special deal whereby we knew we were going to Crete, but didn't know whereabouts in Crete it would be. We tried to get an even more special deal whereby we wouldn't even know what country we would be going to, but they wouldn't let us as we would have been able to find out what country it was once they gave us the flight number.
We arrived at the airport and got onto a coach. It drove around for a bit and then dropped us off outside a hotel. It was pretty much in the middle of nowhere. It had a shop next door a beach over the road and an oil refinery on the beach. About 10 to 15 minutes walk down the road there was a restaurant. It was all a long time ago so the following will be full of inaccuracies, but rather than speculate I will tell it as I think it happened:
- On the first day we went swimming in the sea which was rather rough. We swam out a little way and then tried to swim back to shore. It took about 3 minutes to swim out and about and hour or so to swim back. The first one back had to help the other to make the final bit. We were completely exhausted.
- It didnt take us long to spot a couple of very fine looking German girls so we hung around a bit near them in the hope we might be able to get chatting with them, but our hopes were dashed when one night walking back from the restaurant we saw them walking together hand in hand.
- One day we rented a moped, only they had run out of mopeds so we rented a motor bike instead (Adrian tried to negotiate us getting it for the same price as a moped would have been). We took it in turns to drive and went to visit the palace at knossos which was half way around the island. We had a real laugh walking around that place and taking amusing photos.
- On the way back from Knossos we saw a dead bulldog in the road. It was upside down with its legs sticking straight up the air and it looked like it had been inflated to quite a high pressure.
- We sent a few postcards to people that were hilarious, or at least we thought they were (can't remember what we put in them though).
- Adrian took a photo of me by the water and I had my special swimming trunks on.
- I decided I wanted to by some local cigarettes (because I always think it is cool to get things that you can't get back home). I went up to the kiosk and said please can I have some Greek cigarettes. They didn't speak god English and wanted more info from me. I said I want a mild sort of local cigarette. They perked up at this point and presented me with a packet of cigarettes proadly baring the name "Milde Sorte".
Needless to say they tasted foul. I ended up smoking HB soft pack for the remainder of the holiday. They were cool for the following reasons:
1. you couldn't get them back home
2. they were in a soft pack
3. they actually tasted pretty good
and of course all this meant I was pretty cool too. (..and to all you kiddies out there "Smoking is not good and not cool. It used to be cool when I smoked, but it stopped being cool around 10 years ago when I gave up". So don't try it at home.)

The rest of the holiday remains a mystery. I can't even remember what the inside of my room looked like or whether we had seperate rooms or shared.

Day 328: Crete it was then....

Adrian and I have been on 2 trips to Greece together. The first one was a school trip to Athens. I don't remember too much about it, although Adrian's comment follwing my previous post has brought quite a few bits back to me. The main things I remember are as follows:
- Yes I may have bought a watch on the plane on the way out there (I remember thinking about buying it, but I had an idea that I was talked out of buying it at the last moment as I think it would have cost me all the spending money I had on me plus I would have needed to borrow some off Adrian - but that could all be nonesense as it was a very long time ago and my memory is not what it used to be).
- It was very hot in Athens and a great deal of money needed to be spent buying drinks.
- We went to see the Temple of Poseidon which pleased me as I had an album called "In the Wake of Poseidon" by King Crimson and that produced some sort of link. I have realised over the last few years that I really like it when things link up like that. It could be because I am bad at making decisions so the process becomes so much easier if the choice can be linked into something I already like.
- I had a jacket that was a quite striking shade of green and some sunglasses with blue lenses.
- I bought a number of records (including Vital by VDGG and Music for Films by Brian Eno).
- Instead of sleeping in rooms in our hotel we had camp beds at the ends of corridors, but they still had doors that could be shut.
- One night I got so fed up of being bitten by mosquitos that I got my pillow and started hitting it against the walls to try and kill as many of the little buggers as I could. Next morning the walls were coverred in red splodges and so was my pillow case.
- I think we went on some sort of boat trip.
- We found out that a British 2p coin could be used in the space invaders and night driver machines.
- At some point we ended up on a coach with a school trip of Welsh teenagers who kept singing the sames song over and over again. The song went along the lines that every where they went people wanted to know who they are, so they told them they were welsh, and went on to add that in actual fact they were very very welsh and found that every where they went people wanted to know who they were etc etc... After a few hours of this Adrian sang a version of the song with slightly different lyrics and was promply punched in the shoulder by the welsh girl sitting behind him (she obviously fancied him).
- On the flight home we had the whole plane to ourselves so we could lift up the chair arms and sleep lying accross the 3 seats and also eay as many breakfasts as we wanted. I ate several.

In the next thrilling installment I will tell the tale of the Cretan mission as remembered by Björk Bjiggler.

Day 41: A desert full of sand

In case you are wondering who that sylph-like figure is on the front cover of the cloudhands website, I can confirm that it is me. I think the photo was either taken in Crete or Athens, but more likely in Athens. If it was the Athens trip, then this was the very first time I drank Sprite and it is where I bought my first Van der Graaf Generator LP (Vital). It is strange to think that the picture was taken in a certain time and space and here I am now in this time and space. If I went back to that time and place and did it all again it is highly unlikely that I would end up here now. But would things be better now or worse? There is no way of knowing. All I know is the here and now. If I take a certain path then I know what happens after I take that path, but I can never know what might have happened if I had taken a different path. I can certainly speculate on it, but I can never know for sure.

Shortly after I started writing this entry my good friend and collegue Al announced that he couldn't get onto blogger.com it was being blocked. I smuggly replied that I had got onto it ok so he must be some sort of light weight when it came to using the inter web. Once I have was happy with my opus I hit the "publish and be damned" button and got the same fecking message as him. I hit the back button and there was a blank form staring back at me. So, some jobsworth had been and implemented a block on blogger.com just after I had logged in! I quickly booted up my PowerBook in the hope that I would be able to remember what I put if I could get typing quickly enough, but as expected I could only remember the rough outline of what I put. This may have been the best bit of prose I had ever written and that was it gone into the ether (with Augustus John).

If anyone out there can tell me how I might be able to get my original text back from the firefox cache of oblivion please let me know in the comments for this post and I will see if I can resurrect it and replace this with the post it should have been.

Day 266: How I Got You To Love Me

When I was working in Sweden in 2000 I used to visit the local CD/DVD shop quite often in my lunch break to see what the average hip young Swede was listening to. I noticed a cd called Hagnesta Hill by a group called Kent that seemed to be making its way up the charts. I was particularly struck by the cover and even though I had never heard anything by this group and didn't even know what sort of music they produced I ended up feeling compelled into buying it just because the cover was so good.


Eventually I bought it, and remember having mixed feelings when I first listended to it. I really liked the first song, but wasn't so sure about the others. But I persevered and it grew on me bit by bit. I'm glad I did as I still regularly play it - in fact I listened to a few tracks from it today while on the treadmill at the Gym, until the treadmill suddenly stopped going round about 3 quarters of the way through my program, so I went and had a sauna instead.

Since buying Hagnesta Hill I have bought most of Kents other cds. I think they have got better with each release and their last one (Vapen och Ammunition) is one of the best cds I own. I have bought quite a few Swedish cds since working there as it has helped me with learning Swedish and keeping it current as I don't get much chance to practise it these days. The trouble with liking Swedish Groups is that they don't tend to play in the UK so the only way to see them is with a trip to my favourate land, but that is not possible as often as I would like. In fact the only concert I have been to so far in Sweden is Sting, who last time I checked, wasn't a Swedish Singer. That reminds me that I haven't written about that weekend yet - I'll save that for a different blog entry.

Anyway back to the main story. In the last few years I have manged to see Roxette in Brussels, Björk in Brussels and The Kings of Convenience in Glasgow and Edinburgh. So, of these only Roxette is actually Swedish and they sing in English. The list of groups I really want to see include: Eva Dahlgren, Marie Fredriksson (solo not with Roxette), Shirley Clamp, Lisa Nilsson and Kent. When I was working in Sweden I noticed that an album called The Best of Marie Fredriksson came out and got to number 1 in the charts and I also noticed she was going to perform a big outdoor concert in Stockholm, but at the time I didn't know who she was and hadn't heard any of her songs so I didn't bother going. But the concert was later released on DVD so I bought it and really regreted not going. On a later visit to Stockholm, Kent played a concert but I was unable to go as I was there on a short trip with my familly and on another ocassion Lisa Nilsson was playing a concert right next to our hotel at a venue called the Cirkus, and again I wasn't able to go. This Lisa Nilsson concert also came out on DVD so at least I was able to see it second hand.

But, and here we finally get to were all this rambling on is leading to, a couple of weeks ago I got my usual weekly email from BiljettDirect Ticnet to find out that Kent are doing a tour of Scandinavia next year and tickets were going on sale on monday 22nd november. So that monday I went straight to their web site and went through the process of booking them to find that only customers living in Sweden were able to book the tickets online. If you wanted to book them from another country you needed to ring the line. This caused me to break into a bit if a sweat as on the one hand I could use it as an oportunity to practise my Swedish, but on the other hand I felt sure I would make an idiot of myself by getting into a situation were I couldn't say what I needed to. So I kept beginning to dial the number, but then stopping as I chickened out. By lunch time I thought I had better just get on with it so I went outside, away from prying ears, and rang the number. I was presented with a message saying all the lines were busy, but I could book tickets by visiting www.ticnet.se instead and was promptly cut off. That was no good because I couldn't book the tickets at www.ticnet.se.

So I kept trying and getting the same message, but eventually in the middle of the afternoon I got a message saying I had been placed in a queue. Now my heart began really beating fast as I was listening to the lift music in the background - at any moment someone was going to answer the phone and I was going to go "umm.....". Eventually the fatal moment came and someone answered the phone. In the panic I didn't hear a word of what she said, but I managed to come out with "Kan Jag köpper två biljetter för Kent i Stockholm nästa mij?" and then added "Jag bo i England". She seemed to understand the general drift of what I said and came back at me with a string of Swedish, of which I managed to latch on to the single word "skickar" which means "send". So I came back with "Kan du skickar dem till mij?" and the responce was "Ja" so that was the first bit of the transaction done and dusted. By now I was in a real panic about how to procede so I said "Kan du taller Engelska?" and she replied "Ja" again so my final bit of Swedish was to say "Min Svenskt är inte så bra" to which she replied "I thought you Swdish was very good" which made me feel really good, but deep down I knew I had bottled it.

The remainder of the transaction was performed in English, but I ended up with 2 tickets booked for Saturday 28th May. The only complication was that I could not pay by credit card I would need to transfer the money into their bank account in Stockholm. I remembered that I had had to do this for the Sting concert I went to and knew it involved filling in complicated forms at the bank that usually involed havaing to go back to the bank a second time as I didn't have all the corect information with me the first time. And true to form, that is exactly what happened this time. So the money is currently in limbo between my bank acount and that of the ticket agancy and I am hoping they won't decide I'm not paying and re-sell the tickets before the money gets to them.

All that remains is to find a travelling companion, and that may already have been resolved by Adrian, who so kindly accompanied me to the Sting concert mentioned earlier.

Day 247 - That petrol emotion

So for all you bjigglerettes out there who have been on baited tenderhooks wondering if my car will ever see the light of day following its petrol leak, I can now bring you all the closure you have been waiting so long for. At the end of the last installment I had the car booked into the garage and was having to get lifts of various assorted friends, hangers on and taxi companies so that I didn't leave a trail of petrol all over the roads of Scotland. On the Wednesday morning I set off to the garage and parked it out front when I got there. I went into the office and waited to be served. One of the guy's that recommended the garage to me said the main reason for recomending them was that the guy who ran it looked like a pirate and soon enough in walked a guy who looked like a pirate. So I knew there an then that I had indeed made the correct choice of garage. There was no way that a guy who ran a garage and looked like a pirate was going to fleece me. I told him who I was and that following our phone call to discuss the problem I was bring ing the car in. "Ok" he said, "when do you want it back?" I told him I was having a long weekend (going away thursday and back next tuesday) and thought it was likely to take ages to fix as it may involve having to order specialised parts so basically I would be prepared to wait as long as it took. I then said "shall I show you where the leak is?" to which he responed "no". So I said "well please will you ring me as soon as you know what needs doing?" He said "yes" so I headed off to the nearest bus stop to catch a bus into work (so we'd better add buses to that earlier list of modes of transport). While I was waiting for the bus I began to worry. Because I said I would be away until next Tuesday he probably wasn't even going to start looking at the car until then, and then I'm going to have to order parts and get them delivered to the garage and then he's probably going to find that there is so much rust on the car that there is nothing to fit the new parts to, and I'd have to spend weeks getting lifts of all my friends, hangers on, taxis and buses (and ok I haven't really got any hangers on, but it makes me feel good to think I have). I began wishing I had said I needed the car back immediately and hadn't mentioned that I would be having a long weekend. In fact the only thing I had left to cling onto was the fact that he looked like a pirate so things might not turn out to be quite so bad.

Anyway the bus took exactly 1 hour to get me to work - if I had been in a car it would have taken about 10 minutes, but the bus decided it was going to take the most windy and laborious route it could. During the remainder of the day I was told by a number of people that I should definately have said I needed the car straight back and I wouldn't be seeing it for ages now. Each time my phone rang I thought thats them ringing to tell me I need a new petrol tank and its going to cost £5000 and take 8 months to fix. But they didn't ring and I ended up getting a lift home from a kindly collegue.

The next morning the garage still hadn't rung, and I also needed to arrange a lift to the airport after lunch now that I was carless. I sent an eamil around the office to see if anyone was going around about the time I was that could give me a lift. I got a number of offers back, but they were all leaving at such a time that would make me at risk of missing my flight, so I thought I'd better just book a taxi. At around 12:00ish went into the corridor (which is the only place I can get a hint of a signal on my mobile phone) and decided as the garage still hadn't rung I would ring them to see if they had got around to having a look at it yet. The pirate guy answered and I asked if they were in a position to tell me the worst about my car yet. He said "didn't you get the messge I left on your phone? We've fixed your car and its ready to collect". I was completely taken aback and aked how much it would cost. The reply was £40. I was amazed, but now I needed some way to get t9o the garage to pick up the car, and I couldn't take the bus becuase that wuold make me too late to catch my flight. Luckily Al came to the rescue and drove me down to the garage. He even filled up his bivvy can with petrol to make sure I would have enough to get me to the garage (you can see why he is such a hit with the ladies).

So I had manged to get my car back quicker than I could have hoped for and it had only cost me £40. So as far as I'm concerned you can't go wrong if you take you car to a garage where the guy running it looks like a pirate.

Is there a doctor in the house?

My appointment was 9.05. In the morning.
This would seem a logical time, for so many reasons. Firstly, it means a quick detour before going to work, minimising the time away from the tedious, mortgage paying nonsense. Secondaly, first thing in the morning means the Doc has little time to overrun his alloted time from previous patients, so should be just about on time, right?
So, I arrive at 9, knowing his time is valuable and not wanting to be the first cause of overrun, so that everyone else can be saved from waiting in the, umm, waiting room amongst the single mothers and pensioners who are only there to pass the time and stink out the place with their deep scent of depression and hopelessness.
As a sidenote, for the technical people amongst us, the practice (why is it called a 'practice' anyway, I want to go to one that's called the 'perfect') has a new system installed. To save valuable time and resources, the doctor no longer buzzes reception to let them know he's ready for a patient. He now clicks on his EDS supplied GUI, which is connected to one of those long, red LED display boards. The main purpose of this is to waste a few seconds, then phone reception, explaining how his computer thing has 'crashed' again and allowing the IT expert behind the desk to show her technical prowess by telling him to 'go out, and then back in again'. A couple of minutes later the buzzer goes and a name appears on the screen. Good job we've got these advancements going in to save time.
Anyway, as 9.10 appears and leaves, a body passes me from the front door and proceeds directly into the doctor's office. "Wait a minute, that's a bit unfair." is my initial thought, before realising it was, in fact, the doctor. So, he's late. Fantastic. I get a little peeved that I make sure I'm not holding anyone up, and realise that he can sometimes be held back through working on a more serious problem on someone else, but I'm not sure not getting his arse out of bed in time to neck his first half-bottle of whisky of the day counts as unavoidable.
Oh, there goes the buzzer. My buttocks strain from the anti-ergonomic chair in anticipation, as someone else's name appears on the screen. Great, now I need to wait on the old boy trundling into the doctor's room and straining to supply a piss-sample from his wrinkly old tadger. So, have to wait another 15 minutes before going in to get a course of antibiotics for the sore throat.
He doesn't write prescriptions any more. He clicks on his EDS SuperDoc system, which prints it out and he just has to sign. Or doesn't. He pulls out his old-fashioned pad and fills it out. "Have you tried coming out and going back in?", asks I, helpfully.

Day 225: A forest in disguise

Some time ago I made brief mention of the fact that I bought a 32 year old Volvo for use as a runabout while I am in Scotland. I, then, singularly failed to mention it in any further postings, so I will rectify the matter here.

Before getting this car I had been renting one each Monday morning from Edinburgh airport and returning it on Friday. I had thought that there must be a better way of organising all my weekday travelling needs than forking out for a hire car each week, so during a quietish time in Germany around 18 months ago I started looking through all the makes of second hand car that were available on autotrader to see what took my fancy. I only had 2 criteria: it had to be cheap and it had to be cool (i.e. not just some bog standard normal car). Oh, and also it had to be Swedish (well it didn't really need to be, but if it was it would be worth an extra 1,000 points on the deciding whether I wanted one or not scoring system). So while browsing I came accross a car called a Volvo P1800. It looked quite cool, but the front of it reminded me of a car I used to really like when I was younger and had even tried to get my Mum to by one. I had never known what the model of this car was, I just referred to it as a Volvo Sports Estate or some such thing.
So now I had a plan. I needed to try and find out what the model of the Volvo sports car was and then buy one. The first bit was the easiest - after a bit of searching I saw it was called a Volvo 1800ES and it was the best looking car ever made. Buying one was a bit harder. I managed to track one down, so rang the seller who said he couldn't say it was in showroom condition, but it very nearly was. he said it was kept in a garage and had had a full bare metal respray 7 years earlier. So I drove over 100 miles to go and see this car to find that it smelled of damp and looked like it had been painted with a brush.

Anyway after seeing 1 other car that turned out not to be all I first thought it was I managed to get hold of one with a full years mot that didn't cost a huge amount of money. I bought it in London, drove it to Yorkshire, then Scotland and then from Scotland to Yorkshire and back all in the first week. It had a few dents in it and a few bits of rust, but on the whole I was very pleased with it. Infact I far prefered driving this to the near new rental cars I had been spending my money on. I even found that someone had shoved a caristhestar business card invitting me to register the car at their site one day. I worked out that if the car lasted me for 19 weeks and then blew up I would have spent the same in those 19 weeks as I would on a hire car. So far I've had the car for 25 weeks, so in my books it has already paid for intself and I haven't been shy about going around saying how reliable its been and other famous last words such as how I haven't spent a single penny on it since I got it etc etc....

So after being told by countless people that I am tempting fate and me ignoring it completely my car now has a petrol leak. It was discovered last thursday when I picked Al up to go to the Gym. Someone had seen us drive off and noticed that I left a trail of liquid behind me as I sped into the distance. After they let me know I had a look under the car, but nothing seemed to be dripping so I took the car home on Thursday night and looked under it again on Friday morning before I left for work. There was still no sign of a leak, but when I got out of my car in the work carpark I couldn't fail to notice a line of liquid leading all the way around the carpark to my car. I imagined that my petrol tank had probably rusted through and the only option was going to be to get a new petrol tank, but I had no idea who on earth I would be able to get to fit it. I was beginnning to think that as the car had already paid for itself (compared to the cost of renting a car) I may as well just take it round to the nearest scrap yard. But at lunchtime I went out to look at it more closely and yet again there was no sign of any leakage whatsoever. So I turned the engine on and went and looked again and there was now a steady drip of petrol. I turned the engine off and after a few moment the dripping stopped again.

So at themoment my conclusion is that it may not need a new petrol tank after all, but as I know nothing about cars I guess I could stil be wrong. I have it booked into a local garage for Wednesday morning so I will post an update once they have had a look.

I think I should add, that after this post I feel a bit like a train spotter, but in reality I'm not really into cars at all - I just couldn't think of anything else to write about - so sorry, but there you go - life's like that, so deal with it.

Quizzes are bad, m'kay?

Oh dear. I'm not feeling so good.
The Company had a quiz night last night. A few of us went along.
I think the rest is pretty obvious, but I'll labour the point for the bored amongst us.
Free drink (first three, terms and conditions apply), free food (unidentifiable foodstuffs, tasteless) and a bundle of questions. 160 people, teams of six.
My team sucked. It's not that we were stupid, we just didn't know the name of Britney Spears' husband. We had a decent mix of ages, but no girls, so the Sex in the City questions were a waste of time too. To cut to the chase, we finished about 13th out of, umm, 160/6. This was made worse by the other half of our department, who were sitting right in front of us, taking the lead before being pipped by 1 point in the very last round.
Highlights - The team that took the sheet asking for the phonetic alphabet and filling in "ay, bee, cee, dee, eff, jee,etc". One of our team mates answering the "heart of midlothian" author question with "William Wallace", then arguing his case by mentioning the Wallace Monument.
Sample questions -
Next line of the song required....
There were voices down the corridor, thought I heard them say...
I want to reach out and touch the flame...

Who was the architect of the Scottish Parliment?
Name 5 inert gases.

That'll need to do, I'm tired.

I got the bird

Just a quick antidote from last night...

I was sitting quietly, strumming away gently on the guitar trying to master a chord change or two when I heard something fall over in another room. I wandered through, expecting to see a picture on the floor and a hole in the wall, but nothing seemed amiss. There was then another crash, this time identifiably from the bathroom. As I stood in the room, trying to figure out what had fallen, twice, there was another one. It seemed to be coming from under the bath itself!
As visions of the bath collapsing through a water damaged floor into the foundations of the house, I removed the front panel of the bath. As I took it off, a black object scuttled from the darkness across the floor. "Shit! A Rat!", was the pant-filling thought running through my
head. Then the black thing took flight. "Shit! A Flying Rat!" was the next moronic thought. "Oh wait, it's more likely a bird" was the schizophrenic conversation going on inside. As I scuttled through the house, with the pose of an inexperienced helicopter passenger alighting, I opened all the doors and windows until the occupying forces found a retreat route.
Underlying question - how on earth does a bird type object get into such a position to start with?
The investigation continues.

Day 208 - The lives I've never led

Prior to joining the Gym I needed to get kitted up with gym type stuff, so the obvious choice for me was a Sweden football shirt. My fellow team memebers thought a football shirt was not the correct thing to wear to the gym, but when I get an idea in my head it isn't about to get shifted by other people talking sense to me. So I went to my local JJB shop and went straight up to the Sweden football shirt section to find that they had 1 in stock. Unfortunately it was XXL and I think that even though I need to lose a few pounds it may just have looked a bit baggy on me. I asked if they were getting any more in stock, but they sucked in their breath and said "You just can't get hold of Sweden shirts at the moment. They can't be had for love nor money". I wondered again if I should get the XXL one, but after a couple of hours pondering I thought I'd better leave the shop, so I did. I then spotted that a Marks and Spencers food hall was in the latter stages of being built and would be opening soon. I though that this was good as I was getting a bit fed up with what Safeway and Asda had to offer in the old food department.

So over the next week or so I visited the sports shop a few more times to buy socks and check if they had any more Sweden football shirts (and also take the oportunity to see if the M&S food hall had opened yet). A couple of times I nearly bought the XXL one, but something always held me back. I didn't even buy it when the price was reduced by £10.

Last night I did the old checking if M&S is open yet routine and I found it was now open. Despite the fact that I have a streaming cold I though I needed to celibrate with some nice food from M&S, a bootle of Cava and a DVD. So I bought the food and Cava from M&S and then went to Asda to buy a DVD.

I ended up buying the butterfly effect as I had heard from few people it was good, although I knew nothing about it other than that. So I sat down with my glass of Cava and small bowl of piri piri cashew nuts and began watching, and I must say it was a really good film. It got me thinking about such things as what would have happened if I had stayed in Sweden in 2000 rather than going back to do some work in Yorkshire. I guess one thing that wouldn't have happened is the creation of this blogg. I have watched a few films since starting this blogg and in the most they have all been, not only good, but also films that could change your life.

Something big is going to happen........

A brief history of mine

Back.

Yup, managed to survive the trek across Europe and return safely and in schedule.

We set off on Friday morning, and early start was required due to having to travel from Glasgow to Prestwick, a mere jaunt of 45 mins or so. We did, of course, have the delay of arguing about something totally innocuous, which is a tradition when we're travelling. It usually results in us deciding not to go, me jumping in the car and driving 200 foot before stopping and going back. So, this meant we were a few minutes late leaving, and I had to hammer the 1.0L Corsa along the M(A)77, a shitty little road which is claiming to be something it's not. We got to the airport in plenty time, and I dropped the passengers off at the door before parking, to save them the walk. The car park wasn't too full, so I got to choose my space, then sauntered into the airport myself. A "Gate Closed" sign greeted me. It had just been erected as the scouting party arrived, but had been up for a few minuted before I got there. To give them credit, they checked us in without a problem, but it could have been messy.
Flight was pretty uneventful, got to Milan, which was hot and sunny, a nice change to what we had left back home. Done a bit of jumping on bus to town, metro to nearest station to hotel and taxi the last leg. The room wasn't ready, fortunately the lovely receptionist spoke perfect English, with either a scunthorpe or swedish accent. Yeah, I don't know why I couldn't tell which either. We headed to the bar to wait out the cleaners, leaving our baggage at reception to save humphing it around. When the lovely lady came over to tell us the room was ready a few minutes later, we headed back to reception to ask for our bags. "They're in your room sir." was the bemused response. A nice touch, UNA Scandinavia gets a little mention for that one.
We wandered around the area a little, enjoying the sunshine and looking for food. It became clear we were outside the actual centre, about 20 mins walk. It was surprisingly difficult to find any place open for food, so we ended up wandering into a kind of bakery which did slices of pizza, on a kind of really thick base. I have to say, it was tastier than a cheese and onion pastie from Greggs. To get into the centre of town we were advised to get a tram. You buy a ticket for 1 Euro at the hotel reception, or one of the magazine stands dotted around and it's valid for 45 minutes travel on the trams, or one journey on the Metro. Standing at the tramstop for mere minutes gave me time to figure out which way town was, and which number tram to get. The system was pretty easy, even for the Itialianly challenged like myself. A number 33 arrived, we jumped on, and I attempted to hand over my tickets to the driver. He waved me up the tram, obviously completely uninterested in such trivialities. I idly wondered how they knew your ticket had been used, but thought nothing too much about it.
We arrived in the dead centre (Duomo) to the view of an amazing exhibition of the redirection of poor people's cash into a high profile advertising campaign for the catholic church. We decided to just have a glance and then go get some food, saving the proper investigation for Saturday.

Gym #2

Went again today.
This time Paul and DJ joined us, so the only one missing is Pao, who
won't go 'cos he reckons it's rubbish. Actually there was probably a
better explanation for that, but I kinda switched off since he was
boring me.

We all went on the treadmill and plodded for ages. It was quite good I
suppose, we were knackered at the end.

Did fitness tests, Dom is +7, I was -14, Paul was obviously 0 and DJ
scores 0 too.

Don't really have any interesting stories about it - altough DJ and a
strap-on came up in conversation.

Anyway, I'm off to Milan tomorrow, and the weather looks decent, so
fudbuckets to you all

Mr Universe

So, we did it. Went to the gym.

It was great, we did a fitness test. At the risk of unleashing the wrath
of Dom, I'll post the results. That way we can update the scores as they
(hopefully) increase.

Actually - bollox to that - I'll zero the scores to save embarrassment.

So -

Al - 0
Dom - 0

Hopefully this won't be a competition, it's more meant as a record to make
us feel good about ourselves.

Unless I do better, then it's a competition.

We'll keep you posted with updates at least weekly. Unless we don't feel
like it.

Oh, little story for posterity

We get to the gym, get our shorts on and pop on the scales just as we're
going into the gym itself.
"80kgs" says Dom, "me too!" exclaims me, strange coincidence since our
builds are quite different.
So, one workout later we get showered and dressed, grabbing all our wet
towels and gear in our bags.
"Want to see if you've lost any weight?" says I jokingly on the way out.
"Yeah! Good idea!" says Dom, and jumps onto the scales, now fully clothed
and carrying a sports bag full of wet stuff.
"90??!??! How come I've put on 10kg after a workout???!??!".
I smiled serenely and never cracked a light.

This is a test post

Did you know you could update the blog by emailing it?

I know how to do it but I'm not telling you.

Not not here
Hrmm. It was looking like I was going to be leaving the land of the insane for a while. But I'm not. This is purely due to the addition of funds which will be used to stabilise the pile of money I currently sleep on. It does get a bit squished after a while unless you fluff it up, or add more; and I'm not much of a one for fluffing.
So, I suppose some effort should be put into entertaining the masses with tales from my laugh a minute life.
Oh dear, I got nuthin'

I (re)joined the gym today. I've been getting much chiropracted and actupunctured for a while now and have permission to exacerbate the damage by lifting heavy things, so I'm going back tomorrow. Interestingly a number of workmates have decided to join me. Dom will be there, fighting the flab, Paul may well come along, toning some abs and Dave will be there, umm, probably just deriding us for being unfit and not using the equipment properly.

In other news: I'm off to Milan this weekend for a fun-filled experience of testing Paolo's Italian cursing lessons to the full. There will be wine.

Oh, and before I forget, I watched Alien Vs Predator last night. It was shit.

Matchday Report
We all went out the other night.
It was a bit of a plan for a while, but we finally managed to organise a bit of a night out. Our good friend Pao had arranged a table in a lovely little Thai resturaunt in Edinburgh, one he frequents while he's living his nomadic lifestyle up here in Sconny Botland.
Now, I would have thought this through a bit more. We're not exactly renound for being the quietest of groups, or politically correct. As an example, one of the conversations consisted of Andy winding up the group about something, I've no recollection what, but the resultant put down from, umm, one of us, "Ah, but we know what women's fannies taste like", said with just the right amount of venom, gives an idea of the quality of our verbal output. So, it might not be a venue that Pao frequents any more.
We also drank in a pub called The Blue Blazer which, despite our reservations, turned out to be a leather thong free zone, and actually had a fair old collection of whiskeys, beers and other non-gay drinks.
Needless to say, I missed the last train home. So, we proceeded to drink a bundle more things and get acceptably drunk, then get a vastly overpriced taxi home.
Ratings
Pao 7/10 - Extra points for booking the venue, but loses points for some confessions that will never be repeated or believed
Andy 6/10 - Loses points for being a bit unwell, but gains a few for sharing the cost of the taxi
Paul 7/10 - Points for being the drunkest when I arrived, but not falling over all night
Dom 8/10 - Some never to be forgotten lines escaped his warped mind as the evening wore on
Al 10/10 - As always, witty and chatty, with countless entertaining stories to regail the crowd with. (The crowd, of course, were smart enough to refuse to listen)

So, same time next week then?