Yes, yes, I do indeed love it when stuff “just works”.

Today is one of those days where everything suddenly drops into place, and it all clicks together smoothly and efficiently.

I love days where this happens. It’s just a pity they’re not more common.

Today’s post contained a serious goodie – well, two goodies if you count the photos from the weekend’s Murder Mystery Party.

But no, the main goodie came from Amazon, that I’d (almost) forgotten I’d ordered – Season Six of “The West Wing“, which hasn’t even made it onto E4 yet over here, let alone Channel 4. Yes, I could’ve downloaded the episodes, and watched them after they came out, and I could even do the same with the current Season Seven, but I either keep forgetting, or can’t be arsed – I know it’ll come out over here as a box-set, so why hurry and then have to wait even longer?

Still, it does mean we’ve got plenty to watch over the oncoming darker nights.

And yes, I suppose I could/should wait ’til my birthday for this kind of thing when it’s come out barely a month before, but well, some things can’t wait. The West Wing is one of them. Sad, but true.

Right underneath my window, a busker has set up for the day. No normal busker either, but one with a steel drum (I’ve forgotten the proper name for it) from a Jamaican steel band. This is probably not as great as you would imagine.

We’ve been “privileged” (in the loosest possible sense of the word) to hear him so far murdering stuff by UB40, Level 42, and a number of other *cough* “reggae-based” bands. I’m still waiting for Karma Chameleon, but frankly it can’t be far off. And yes, I know UB40 et al. did a pretty good job of murdering this stuff themselves, but Jesus Christ, this guy’s bad. Up ’til today I hadn’t actually heard a steel-drum emit as many duff notes. He either got this thing of Honest Jah the second-hand-drum seller, or he’s shit. I can’t actually decide which.

What he doesn’t know is that up here in the office, we have a pool table. By definition this also means we have pool cues. Some of the people here are finding that the temptation to go downstairs and beat him round the head with a pool cue is becoming hard to resist…

For some reason unknown to all but themselves, I’ve recently been getting a lot of contacts from a couple of IT agencies (I won’t name them here, because why should I give them any credit? Instead I shall name them Aldous and Regressive – which should be enough of a clue for any other IT people who read this…) about jobs in Manchester. Now, I told all the agencies I deal with (including Aldous and Regressive) that I had moved – and let’s face it, we’re talking nine months ago here, so you’d think they might have had time to alter their records by now.

Anyway, yesterday I got emails from both companies, despite repeatedly telling them by phone and email that I a) had moved, and b) wasn’t looking for work. You’d think that was fairly blunt, wouldn’t you?

But oh no, not in Regressive’s case. Instead, I got the following reply.

Thanks for the update- where are you now looking for work? Regressive has offices across the Uk and Europe and we would be more than happy to keep you posted about other suitable roles.
Kind regards

Sometimes agencies are just too bloody thick to be believed.

Over the weekend, as I commented earlier, Herself & I organised and went to a Murder Mystery Party, held in honour of Herself’s mum’s birthday. (Knowing she reads this on occasion, I won’t mention the age…) As part of this, we’d ordered (and received) the Murder in the Wild West pack, which made a lot of the organisation one hell of a lot easier.

There are some very important things to know about these Murder Mystery parties-

1. It really does help if everyone gets properly involved, and dresses up “in theme” for them- in this case, everyone did, and it added a whole dimension to the evening
2. I don’t know about the others, but “Wild West” is definitely not for the prudish and polite. Some of the humour in it is decidedly adult, and close to the knuckle in places
3. It’s best to have one person “extra” to act as host, and organise the other stuff, otherwise it has the potential to be bloody chaotic
4. Finally, it’s recommended that there should be large amounts of alcohol on hand

It also helps to have at least one person (and ideally a couple of people) incapable of taking the entire thing seriously, and – in this case at least – adding a bundle of humour as the World’s Campest Indian.(and yes, he’s going to kill me for putting up the photo) The character started off as “lowerwatha”, which was OK – but then a certain person who shall remain nameless (OK, OK, it was me) used the name “‘iyawatha”, with the ‘iya! done very high-pitched and camp. Despite repeated threats of violence against my person (and tackle) Mr. Watha ended up taking this and turning into a high-pitched Camp Indian. Politically correct? Hell, no. Funny as chuff? Oh, most definitely yes.

All in all, the entire evening was highly successful. I haven’t laughed so much in ages – not just at Mr Watha, but also at General Custard’s wig, which was straight off the Monkees, and many other things beside. My ribs hurt in the morning. Of course, the alcohol helped too.

Based on a sample of one, the Murder Mystery sets are bloody good, and we’ll definitely be making use of at least one more, I think.

Now I have to say, this is a pretty cool idea – one of those where everyone suddenly goes “Why didn’t I think of that?!?”