In about ten day’s time, we’ll be off to Ireland for a week. We’ve finally got our accomodation requirements sorted out – it’s taken this long to get round to it.

Between now and then, I’m going to be writing some stuff that’ll go up while we’re away, but well, this is kind of advanced warning that I haven’t died, I’m just away.

Of course, there’ll be a whole bundle of stuff to go up when we come back, but that’s just the way of these things sometimes.

Well, we’re back. Knackered, but enjoyed most of the time at Chelsea. In fact – and most people won’t be surprised by this at all – the thing that detracted from the entire thing the most for me can be simply phrased in two words. “Other people”.

It’s been a long time since I’ve had to deal with that many rude and ignorant/obnoxious people all in one space. I’ve been barged, rammed, trodden on, knocked, walked into, and basically just ended up truly fucked off with ignorant arsewipe motherfuckers who’ve decided that they want to see/do something, so that’s what they’ll do, and bollocks to anyone who might get in the way of that. And the number who just stomp across the viewline of someone with a camera at their eye, then sigh and tut when someone else does it to them – well, words fail me. Actually, no they don’t. But people really don’t like to hear the expression “hypocritical fat-arsed tosswagon cunt” in a genteel atmosphere like Chelsea is supposed to have.

Other than that though, I did enjoy the huge majority of the show. The “Best in Show” is over-rated in my opinion, and the Conran-designed “Peace garden” for the Imperial War Museum should’ve been far higher rated than it was. Given the choice, I’d have swapped the two medals. But there we go, that’s a personal perspective.

Over 120 photos were taken, so I’m going to go through them tomorrow before putting together a nice new page with photos and some more thoughts.

Urggh, what kind of time is this to be up on a Saturday?

Anyway, we’re off to Chelsea to see the Flower Show, which’ll either be fun or a complete nightmare. I’m sure I’ll come back with plenty of photos etc., so in the meantime have a good day.

More later / tomorrow.

Over the last couple of months I’ve been doing quite a lot of work for a charity I’m involved in. Website and so on a while back, and now dealing with a lot of fund-raising issues and the like. Which is all quite fun, and in general I’m enjoying it.

In the last fortnight though, we’ve had a couple of bits that’ve turned into utter nightmares. Nothing complicated – we wanted some sticky labels printed to give to people when they’ve donated some money, that kind of thing, and also a couple of collection buckets.

Neither of these things is overly cheap, but the companies we’ve dealt with for them have been utterly useless. One doesn’t respond for a week at a time, and then seems amazed that we’d be slightly annoyed. In both cases we have to provide artwork for the relevant labels that are getting printed – I can understand this, up to a point, but when it comes to the company saying “we can’t accept this image, it needs to be the exact size for the label, and it needs to come through in a format for either Freehand MX or Quark”, you start to lose the plot a bit. Freehand MX isn’t that common anyway, and when the image has been sent in a standard Photoshop format, Freehand can import the file anyway. I know, because that’s how I did it in the end.

But in general we’ve been made to jump through every hoop for these companies, while all they really do is take the money and provide the goods. There’s been no assistance, they won’t resize the images or really do anything helpful at all. Most amazing of all, for a company dealing with mail-order requests, neither company has a credit-card facility at all. Nothing. And they can’t deal with an internet banking fund transfer to their account either. It’s pretty much cheque, cash, and that’s it. Which, in the middle of 2005 isn’t exactly the most helpful or competent way of handling things.

It’s been an incredibly frustrating process, and one I hope I don’t have to repeat too often. In the meantime, I’m going to be looking at sourcing other suppliers, so I won’t have to deal with these bloody cowboys again.

Yay! Today I have a day off. Lots to do, what with one thing and another, but all the same, it’s a day off.

And what with Monday being a bank holiday here too, I can enjoy a four-day weekend. Now that is definitely a bonus.

More later, but for now well, there’s stuff to do.

Twunty Manager™ : “Lyle, why didn’t you stay late at work last night and help us put the servers in?”
“Did you ask me to?”
“No”
“Well, there you go.”

And then people wonder why I’ve no respect for my *cough* superior…