Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah

My computer is still broken.

Normal service will be resumed as soon as possible.

Meanwhile it won't be.

Blub.

Oh Lordy

Going up.
Floor four.
Doors opening.
Please stand clear of the doors.
Doors closing.
Please stand clear of the doors.
Floor four.
Doors closing.
Going up.

If I live long enough, I will rid the world of gabby lifts.

No, don't thank me.

What Can I Say?

It was only a quick fumble in the bushes.

Breadsticks - I never touch them!

It is 01:19 my time. MY time.

Three and a half decades on, masturbation is just another chore.

"Feeble-minded" has four "e"s in it. As long as I can spell and count, things can't be that bad.

Edmund Clerihew Bentley
Was rather advanced mentally
In inventing the eponymous clerihew
He transcended the haiku.

Wear a suit and tie in Brighton and frequently people will stop you to ask for a pound for their bus fare. In this way I have made many friends.

A mechanical instrument, my watch does not know what the time is. Nor do I, as I cannot remember where I left my watch.

If you thought trams were a thing of the past, come to Croydon. My mother's first job was as a tram conductress. She had to turn the seats over to face the other way at the terminus, and also the cantilever, if that is the right word. With a special wooden pole. She worked in Leeds, but here is an exciting page about trams in Glasgow, some of which have been "retained for Museum purposes".

The gravitational pull of a sausage diminishes with the inverse square of one's distance from it. Just guessing, but I suspect I'm not far wrong.

Thy hand, Belinda; darkness shades me...

Friday Again

Lessons learned:

Your next cigarette is the only pal you'll ever have.

Compliance are timewasting ----s who look like Herge scribbled them, scrunched them up and threw them in the wastepaperbasket.

The people in Room 4 are always from Poland.

---

I will build an entire System on these simple axioms tomorrow. Or the day after. Bit of scheduling, there.

Hove To

Blogista: Look out all you good ladies of Brighton and Hove - the Roving Cocksman is back in town!

Ladies of B&H (good or otherwise, it matters not): All our Saturnalias have come at once!

Blogista's Flack: He has gone to bed to catch up on the necessary. He will be out soon.

Ladies: Oh goody! We don't mind waiting.

Flack: Um, looks like he is not going to be out at all today. He is lurking at the back of his house, either sleeping or blogging. Bit like a panda. He's there, but you can't actually see him, only some concrete and mouldy straw. And droppings.

Ladies: Ohhhh. Next weekend, maybe?

Flack: Yeh, prolly next weekend.

Insomnia

Phrase of the Day (ta-daaa)

ето ёжу ясно

eto yozhu yasno

It is obvious, "it is clear to a hedgehog".

---

Sleep (hours per day) so far this week...

Sunday : 0
Monday: 1
Tuesday: 0.5
Wednesday: 2

I'm surprised I can still function at all. I should be wandering round the office looking like the Return of the Mummy, only with a rictus grin and an apple-green silk tie.

Oh well. I have raised an Issue, resolved several Issues, produced a Schedule and Escalated twice (resulting a We Hear You meeting for Admin, and a Mild Bollocking for an uppity Team Leader), not bad for week one.

On the other hand I have not written any Reports for the Progress Meeting tomorrow. I have nothing to report. And, a Project Manager, I have made no Gantt Charts. I am relying on boyish charm and obfuscation to carry me through, but it won't work next week.

---

Tuesday 02:15, on the doorstep of the B&B for some fresh air and a cigarette.

With me is a woman in her mid-fifties, who was married for sixteen years before her husband died. She had two sons by him. She married again, had a daughter, Dana, and divorced after a year.

Her elder son committed suicide age 21 when his girlfriend left him.

Her parents left her their house, which she sold for £110,000.

Dana used to be a silver service waitress, but now age 29 she is on sickness benefit and has left her boyfriend of six years and her daughter for a girlfriend, Marie.

Dana and Marie have the double room, Mum has the single, £220 for the night.

Marie wants some of her £110,000 to start a business buying cars from scrap yards and rebuilding them. Some times she is a good girl, but she can be very nasty.

They were staying in a B&B in Hastings, but Dana and Marie trashed their room and the police told them to leave Sussex or be arrested.

So they have come to Croydon, are going to Wandsworth tomorrow, and Mum is tired of seeing her money drain away and wants to be rid of Dana and Marie, but can't because her daughter depends on her.

I felt very sorry for her. All she wanted was to live alone in a little house in the country with a Yorkshire terrier. But I had the feeling that she was going to lose.

Cheering Up Through Gritted Teeth

I've posted this before in a previous life, but I need it...



...and Stephane Grappelli and Django Reinhardt for extra comfort.

Work work. Apart from the intense strain of having to take life Seriously after nine months of la vie d'un flaneur in Ukraina and Hove, there is

• paying good money to reside in Croydon five nights a (Croydon!!!) week
  

• a single room in a B&B hotel and no hope of getting Laid and the green-lilac striped duvet and the Picture
  

• the lack of seagulls

• the lack of sea
  

• illegal to smoke in English hotel rooms any more, so I have to lean out of the window like an old Frenchman on a third-floor balcony down a sunless side street in Paris
  

• the policemen, the... noooo, in fact everybody went and got younger every year. After nine months on my tod I notice this every five minutes in my populous office

• the Stationary cupboard: some things never change

• likewise the girl in charge of the Stationary Cupboard

• and the Last Stapler In The Stationary Cupboard, the rattly one with "Viv" tippexed on the head
  

But I hope you are awed by the bullet points. I got boxes of 'em. As a Project Manager, I get to apply them like a poxed jade her beauty-patches.

---

Stapler - this is more than you ever wanted to know about staplers, including a last paragraph headed "The Future".

---

LESSONS OF THE WAR

To Alan Michell

Vixi duellis nuper idoneus
Et militavi non sine gloria

I. NAMING OF PARTS

To-day we have naming of parts. Yesterday,
We had daily cleaning. And to-morrow morning,
We shall have what to do after firing. But to-day,
To-day we have naming of parts. Japonica
Glistens like coral in all of the neighboring gardens,
And to-day we have naming of parts.

This is the lower sling swivel. And this
Is the upper sling swivel, whose use you will see,
When you are given your slings. And this is the piling swivel,
Which in your case you have not got. The branches
Hold in the gardens their silent, eloquent gestures,
Which in our case we have not got.

This is the safety-catch, which is always released
With an easy flick of the thumb. And please do not let me
See anyone using his finger. You can do it quite easy
If you have any strength in your thumb. The blossoms
Are fragile and motionless, never letting anyone see
Any of them using their finger.

And this you can see is the bolt. The purpose of this
Is to open the breech, as you see. We can slide it
Rapidly backwards and forwards: we call this
Easing the spring. And rapidly backwards and forwards
The early bees are assaulting and fumbling the flowers:
They call it easing the Spring.

They call it easing the Spring: it is perfectly easy
If you have any strength in your thumb: like the bolt,
And the breech, and the cocking-piece, and the point of balance,
Which in our case we have not got; and the almond-blossom
Silent in all of the gardens and the bees going backwards and forwards,
For to-day we have naming of parts.

Henry Reed, "Naming of Parts", 1942.

For Your Eyes Only

The secret of Tiresias...

...meanwhile I am looking for an MP3 of the Harlem Hamfats doing "Weed Smoker's Dream".

Because you want it, gentle readers.

Down The Coal Mine Again

Off to work on Monday!

I get my own chair a-and a desk and lots of lovely things to do!

And a Suit (available separately).

What fun.

Which means living in Hove at weekends, and at a B&B in Croydon during the week, so I suspect the blogging will cease a bit. World better place for.

A twenty-first century hunter-gathering nomad, that's me.

Poser

David McMahon at Authorblog asks, what do you like most about blogging?

And the quick answer is, reading other blogs. I'm lazy that way.

Sooner or later everything and everyone will drift into the Sargasso Sea of the blogosphere, it is just a matter of waiting and being patient.

Choosing the pictures comes second. Especially when they have little obvious relevance to the post, and obscure meanings for me personally.

Oh Where Is King George

Here.

Steeleye Span cover. Pity I'm about seven months early for the next summer, but it will get here faster if you all sing along.

Louder. Much louder... it's still cold and misty and I don't see any snowdrops, even.

Bayreuth

Blogista: Hey, Ricky, nice place.

Wagner: Sank you for suggestink zat ve built ze extra deep pit for trumpeters at ze back. Zis vay zey can play lout vizout disturbink neighbourhood.

Blogista: Sure, but...

Wagner: My friendt, I did vot you tolt me, and now I haff beautiful orchestra. Sank you.

(hugs)

Blogista: Sure. But I'm here to sell you... jug, banjo, kazoo combo, imagine...

Wagner: Chugg???? Kazoo??? Vot is?

Blogista: Is Gus Cannon's Jug Stompers, is all.

Wagner: But...

Blogista: Were I able to find, say, their "Springdale Blues" on a free rip-off mp3, then you would begin to appreciate their majesty. Meanwhile, walk right in, and build y'theatre with the kazoo in mind.

Wagner: I vill no.

Blogista: Your loss.

---

Ricardo, I'm just sayin, these jug players might be the future.

Zey ken make ze zeatr rumple to ze openink strains off -- Rheingold?

Babes, deeper than deep, bass jugs, they can blow the house down. Opp... kay, stick with the scrapy things, we both gotta consider the insurance, right?

Tempus Eheu Fugit

Horas non numero nisi serenas.

A Spot Of Uncling

Nephew, niece, niece.

So first they went paddling, then they thought it would be a good idea to strip down to their knickers and go sea-diving off a groyne, which they did.

When they'd had enough of that they wandered onto the beach again to kick sand at and plant freezing little paws on their Uncle Chertiozhnik, just for laughs. Which they did.

Only after that did it strike them that they were cold, wet, covered in sand, and nobody had brought any towels or dry clothes.

That is why Grown Ups were invented.

Me, I went for a coffee and a cigarette (gets the sand grains out of your teeth), grateful that the Grown Ups were sorting everything out.

---

Later, at lunch, the middle child noted how much butter I was plastering on my bread and cunningly asked me to butter hers too (oh help!). Her parents (bro and partner) scrape some on and then scrape it off again with a religious air. Chlorestorol, d'you see? Me, if you can see how the butter is defying the laws of physics by leaning against some other substance, you haven't got enough butter.

I passed her back a properly buttered piece or two of whatever.

That's what Uncles are for, I told my brother.

"Indeed", said my bro, in a rather (I felt) old-fashioned tone.

Home Again Home Again Clicketty Click

Biiig incentive to find a fossil.

Only sharp-eyed Brits brought up on "Carry On" films will see what I'm driving at here.

Sorry, the rest of you.

Yes, it is sad, really, but that's the way I am.

Can White Men Sing The Blues?

Nope.

Robert Johnson, "Love in Vain", 1937.

Compare and contrast.









I rest my case.