At the moment I’m commuting to London on a daily basis, which is a bit of a killer. It’s an hour (ish) on the M11 down to Woodford, then catch the tube from Woodford to central London. All told, pretty much two to two-and-a-quarter hours, door-to-door.

Parking in Woodford though is – to say the least – weird.

The car-park on Chateris Road is owned and run by Redbridge Council, and it’s pay-and-display. I use RingGo to sort out the parking, and that makes things even easier – use the iPhone App to pay using my linked credit-card, and job done. £4.80 per day to park – that’s it.

Because the weird thing about the management of this car park is that the ticket machines don’t actually work at all ’til 9am. They won’t accept money, they won’t do anything. You can’t even pay online or by phone until 9am. I tell people this at least three times a week when they’re trying to get a ticket.

It’s the weirdest and most customer-hostile method of operating that I’ve ever seen. Although, on a more cynical note, I wonder if the reasoning is that if people think the machine’s broken, and don’t pay for a ticket, maybe it makes more financial sense (to the council) when they end up with parking tickets for £30 or £60, instead of paying the proper £4.80.

Last week, I made the decision to stop taking the Citalopram.  It hasn’t done much for me in the year I’ve been taking it – other events have had far more effect on depression, motivation etc. than the anti-depressants have.  I’ve also found that they have a nasty levelling side-effect, making me not care more than when I wasn’t taking them. (By that I mean that everything was just same-same in my head, there were no real highs – or, admittedly, lows – and it all became a bit blah, nothing provoking any form of reaction)

Additonally, the anti-depressants just didn’t seem to really work for me. There were still Bad Days on them, but there weren’t really any Good Days- things more levelled out to Just OK Days. (or Blah Days)   My motivation didn’t shoot up – indeed most of the time it seemed to be harder to be motivated, because well, what was the point? I wasn’t Depressed, but more Couldn’t Be Bothered.

So, I’ve come off completely them.  It’s not the method advised by GPs, but I don’t have the time, tolerance or inclination to do a “gradual withdrawal”. If the withdrawal side-effects were to become really bad (not that I expect them to) then I have a new box ready to be started. But I doubt it’ll be that bad.

Weirdly, the worst time (so far) for being off them seems to be early evening, when my head begins to feel a bit wooly, a bit floaty, not really all that level. It’s not debilitating or unpleasant – just a weird sensation.

I don’t miss the Citalopram.

I don’t know what’s next. I’m going to go back to wanting to do things, and then to trying to find ways to motivate myself to do them. So far that seems to be OK. I’m not perfect – thankfully I’ve never claimed to be – and I do have issues with motivation, or at least Getting Things Done.

I’ll still work on the motivation and so on – I’ve still got the ideas and plans, but need to bring them out into the world – but I don’t think it’s actually necessarily related to depression.

And when all’s said and done, I’d rather have the ups and downs of life, depression and whatever else, instead of the flat day-to-day numbness of Citalopram.

Last night I watched Channel 4′s documentary about recreating Barnes Wallis’ bouncing bomb from the second world war. Apparently most of the documentation and research into the project had been lost in a flood in the sixties, so a Cambridge professor recreated the entire project.

However, the entire thing was let down by the first two minutes – it was based on the question “Will they manage to recreate the bomb?” – which unfortunately had been answered in the first two minutes when they showed footage of the new bomb skipping across the water and hitting the purpose-made dam.  Indeed, I think they’d even shown that footage in the trailers for the damn programme.

I don’t know why they did it this way – the documentary was still interesting in all the technical challenges and so on that went into the initial project – but it would’ve been more interesting if you didn’t know the answer before the research even started.

At least two different media sites are today carrying the story about the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) telling clothing company Jack Wills (ever heard of them? I hadn’t) to not continue publishing their current catalogue until certain images are changed.

The story’s on the BBC here – and on the scumrag Daily Mail here.

Only one of the two stories manages to also show the image in it’s full “offensive” version.  Guess which one?

Yep, you got it – good old Daily Fail, making sure its readers know precisely what they should be offended by.

[Oh, and if you do want to know what the image is, look below the 'More' link]

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Today the inquest opened on the events surrounding Derek Bird’s killing spree in Cumbria.

On the BBC news tonight, reporting on the inquest, the following phrase was used…

Bird’s killing spree was outlined in detail for the first time

Now, how can you outline something in detail?

Via the Koriblr tumblr feed…

It's just a job - attributed to Muhammad Ali

Definitely something to remember when the workplace gets skanky