A Trickle Through The Dam-Wall

Some people who read d4d™ will know how regularly I talk about wanting to get back into writing creatively (as opposed to d4d™’s creative ranting *grin*) and seeing how I do with the ideas that have been floating around in my head.

Well today, with no special work needing to be done while sat on the train, and after a disturbingly domestic and relaxed weekend (in spite of the Virgin Trains debacle on Friday) it’s finally started to happen. Four pages may not sound much, but it’s 400% of my output in the last four years. While other things have been going on – you know, small stuff like Life, Friends, Relationships, Chaos – I’ve been uninspired to write this kind of thing. (d4d™ is, in this context, a very different type of writing method) The ideas have been flowing, but there’s been no impetus to expel them onto paper/laptop, and so it’s all been filling the reservoir in my head, staying there in idea form, waiting to fledge into something else.

And now the reservoir’s dam is cracking, and the ideas are beginning to flow out – and it’s in a positive way. When last I was writing in this form, it was more of a need to purge, to get rid of the poisons that had been built up. There was an almost obsessive need to heal, to get it all out any which way I could, to stop it harming me. That’s not there this time – it feels more like story-telling, rather than sucking out venom from wounds.

I’ve no idea where this will end up – or even if it’ll be any good when it comes to the conclusion I already know about – but for now, well, I’ll be happy just to be back writing, and seeing where the tale takes me. It’s not going to be overnight – I don’t expect to be anywhere near finished on it before 2005 at the earliest – but it’s happening, and as I’ve got (at a conservative estimate) 32 hours of train-time in the next eight weeks, I’ve got the opportunity to get a load done, and we’ll go from there really.

IKEA

It’ll come as a shock to most people, but until today I’d actually never visited an IKEA store. But I’m now an afficionado of the Swedish furniture freakshow, and to prove it I have *ahem* even made a purchase. I don’t know what his name is in the catalogue, but it really should be something like HYSSINGSID. Yes, I managed to go, and come back with a metre-long multi-coloured furry snake. Sometimes I even worry myself.

So – what were my thoughts about the joys of Brent Cross Ikea? Well, first and foremost was “Fuck me it’s big!”. But it’s got some good stuff in there – come the time to move, I can see that there may be another shopping expedition there. But it’s not somewhere I’d want to go on a regular basis – the majority of people in there today made me wonder if they’d been thrown out of the local Asda store for sheer stupidity. Abandoned trolleys, people dithering about so badly that I actually saw three people walk into display stands – not just brushing impacts, but full-on whacks. But then, one has to find comedy where you can.

If it weren’t for the people though, I think it’d be fine. The actual stuff they sell seems fine (although I haven’t braved the furniture ordering/collection section, which seems to redefine the phrase “fucked up”) and most of it is devastatingly cheap, too. Plus they’ve got some ace leather sofas to collapse on – definitely been listed in the mental notebook of “Hmmm, potential future purchase”.

If I return (OK, When) though, it won’t be on a summer Sunday just before thousands of students go to university. Timing-wise we really could’ve done better. Next time it’ll be on a cold evening after work, when no-one sane is out shopping for furniture and house-wares. Without too many people there, I suspect it might even be an almost pleasant shopping experience. Might.

Nearlytimeforanupgrade

Bugger,the_space-bar_is_beginning_to_knacker_on_my_laptop. Oh_cunty_fuck.

2000+ starts here

Well, it pains me to say it, but I think that Prince Harry making a film about AIDS in Lesotho is probably a good thing. It’s interesting sometimes, the things that travel between parents and children, isn’t it?

To me, anything that raises the profile of AIDS and HIV is a good thing – I’ll be interested to see what he’s had to say on the subject, whether verbally or visually.

2000^th Post

Wow, two thousand posts. D4D™ has been running now for 25 months – that’s an average of eighty posts per month, nearly three a day, every day. Of course, that’s an average, as there have been small patches of time where nothing’s been written at all. But then there’ve been others where I don’t seem to have stopped adding stuff all day.


I know I’ve said this before, but I still find myself amazed by the success of d4d™. When I got the domain name, it was a spur-of-the-moment idea, a name I liked and was available. It’s still not really relevant to anything I do or write here – it’s just an identifiable title. And that suits me just fine. I started off the idea of d4d nearly three years ago, actually. The domain name existed far before the knowledge of what would go on here – which, for me, isn’t an uncommon state of affairs. Eventually I thought I might try and get back into writing – and make a project of it. Until d4d™, I’d always had a hidtory of starting ideas, getting them started, then getting bored and never completing them. Perhaps d4d™ doesn’t quite fit that definition, because with a writing project like this there’s no defined process, and definitely no defined ending. Perhaps that’s what’s kept me going.

So – two years of writing, and two thousand posts. That’s quite something. And I look at the changes that have happened in that time, at the differences between me when I started, and me now – there’s a lot that’s happened over the timespan. Friendships started, friendships finished – sometimes both within that period; relationships doing the same; forming new and different social networks; seeing a shitload of concerts; starting getting involved in photography again. Moving home; changing lifestyles; and doing lots of thinking, introspection, and writing. Depression and Happiness. It’s all been here, sometimes explicitly, sometimes implied.

And for the next 1,000 or 2,000 posts? Who knows. I need to get that fucking WordPress template sorted, and move everything over to that. I want to go through some of the old stuff, move it around, possibly end up with a very different style to d4d. The rants of old have faded – or at least become concise enough to be blog entries instead of pages of their own. Thoughts may end up being born anew, and the photography section will probably gain some new ideas and perspectives. In fact, I’ve been playing with the idea of having wordy d4d and visual d4d, two different blog-type-concepts, and seeing how that goes.

All I know is that so far I’ve loved d4d™ even on the days when I can’t think of a thing to write. I don’t feel pressure to perform, don’t feel I have to write. But at the same time I do love writing and adding new pieces and ideas. It’s been a fantastic ride so far, and I’ve no intentions of stopping it yet. The next few months, in fact the next year or so are going to be a weird and new journey for me – and a huge percentage of it will be logged here. Enjoy the ride.

Coverage

Many times I hear the speculation that trains will be getting some form of wireless networking and internet access in the UK. I’m sure I’ve commented about this before, but I still completely fail to understand how they expect to get broadband internet access when half the time on a train you can’t even send a bloody text message when you want without a ten-minute wait. O2 used to boast about 95% coverage of the UK- well, I reckon that the other 5% is entirely around bloody rail lines. It’s just taken me twenty minutes to send a text because we were moving through (yet another) zone with absolutely nothing. It’s like the radio version of the effing Marie Celeste sometimes. Why do we bother?

Lulled

Should’ve known better really – the false sense of security that got built up last week by the train journeys to and from Middlesbrough now lies scuffed, bleeding, and broken on the floor. Prime suspect in this vicious crime? You guessed it – Virgin Trains.

What’s even more impressive is that they manage to still find new ways to fuck me off. It is on-time today UPDATED : was on-time, and is now running 45 minutes late, he said in an entirely unshocked fashion, and the air-conditioning is – well, if not working properly, it’s at least on and noticeable. So, dear readers, what have they done this time?

When I checked with trainline.com (yes, that’s probably my first mistake) I looked at a train leaving from Manchester Oxford Road at 14.58, changing at Crewe, then straight down to Reading, getting in at 18.45 or so. Not perfect, but not bad. So that’s what I do – get there way early due to fuck-poor timing on my part, get on the 1458 at Oxford Road, get off at Crewe. Supposedly on-time. And watch my connecting train go sailing past. Cunt-nuggets.

So off to the Travel Centre to face the whey-faced unhelpful motherfuckers lovely Virgin customer services people. Who check their system. And then tell me that the 1458 from Oxford Road doesn’t exist. And therefore it can’t connect to the one I’ve just watched leave. That route from trainline.com supposedly is utterly wrong. Yes, two computer systems, both based around the same fucking database, provided by Network Scumtwadging Bastard Rail and given the exact same data, they come up with two utterly different routings. According to Virgin CS (Customer Service, although I can think of others) I should go from Manchester to Reading via – wait for it – Newport, South Wales. Try looking at that one on a map sometime – and bear in mind that there’s a direct link between Manchester and Reading, and I’ll be getting the bastard thing on Sunday.

“Well, it’s not my problem”, quoth the raven camel, “we can’t take responsibility for the internet site”. “It’s the same chuffing database, though. So who does take responsibility for it?” “Don’t know. But it’s not us.” Ah, the “the Buck stops somewhere, but not with us” gambit – my favourite customer service attitude. Anyway, taking matters into my own hands, I end up getting anothertrain from Crewe to Stafford, then get on one from Stafford direct to Reading. Another plan that, according to Virgin, doesn’t exist. At this point I should point out that both the Crewe to Stafford train, and the one going onward to Reading were – um – Virgin trains. *Sigh*
Of course, because it’s a Friday and travelling during the high-demand rush-hour period, the train is four carriages long instead of the more standard eight, has been at least half pre-booked, and as a result it’s rigid with people. But that’s the Virgin wisdom at work – if in doubt put people off trains by realising that train travel is, in essence, shit, and only for people who can’t afford cars and/or driving lessons.

Well, my nice clean new provisional driving licence arrived this week, and if there’s one thing motivating me to pass the test, it’s Virgin Bloody Trains. Congratulations, you’ll be losing another customer. D4D™s readers will mourn the passing of this era. I, on the other hand, fucking won’t.