Dipping In

I notice that today the water has gone back on at the Diana Memorial Fuck-up Fountain. Of course, now that la Jowell is in charge, there’s a whole new management structure being put in, and the emphasis has moved rapidly from “have fun, paddle, walk in the water” etc. to “sit on the sides and dangle your toes in” – rather an apt metaphor for our own lovely government.

On the news this morning, the old bag was saying that the visitor figures for the fountain had far exceeded their predictions. How did they come up with these original figures? No-one’s saying, but I’m betting it’s of the “Think of a number, treble it, and add two zeros” ilk. In short, no-one had a keffing clue how many people would go and see it, because there was nothing of a similar kind anywhere in the country. So basically it was guess-work. And the guessing was done badly.

The entire concept has been flawed from the start, as I’ve said several times before. No-one at the planning stage said “How are we going to make wet granite non-slippery?” or even “is that really a good idea?” – they just went ahead, and it turned into a farce. Still, better a farce than a media frenzy equivalent to when she popped her clogs, I suppose.

Useful

There are times where I just think that the internet is ace. No other words for it – it’s just ace. This morning, I’ve been able to get this little lot done…

• Check train times for travelling home on Sunday
• Check addresses for car air-con people in Bracknell/Reading
• Check bank balance, and move money from one account to the other
• Order prints of two photos to be sent here, having left the originals at home
• Talk briefly to two friends
• Update d4d™ (slightly self-referential, but there we go)

and

• Pay two outstanding bills

And all without leaving the house. Of course, now I’m going to go out, so I could’ve done most of it anyway, but all the same – well, the internet’s just ace sometimes, isn’t it?

Business as usual

Unsurprisingly, the hits this week have reduced by about 50% due to the spasmodic updates and so on. Of course, that’s still doing fairly well, which is always good.

I must admit, I still find the readership here surprising, both for who reads it and who doesn’t. I’ve got a couple of close friends who ask about whether I’m still writing and so on, but who never read it. And I mean never. It just strikes me as odd – but there we go, what would I know? Perhaps they read it and simply never comment, never let on that they know what’s been happening with me, and keep it all very quiet. But I’m more prone to believe that they simply don’t read it.

Ah well – sorry, it’s just something that’s been on my mind in the last couple of weeks.

Time Out

Christ, take time out and it all starts happening. Not content with More A Way Of Life going from hardcore cynic to loved-up old hippie in 30 seconds flat* , now Kitchentable’s doing the same.

And of course changes are continuing to go on chez D4D™, so there’s a certain little cynical corner of the web that’s going all pink and fluffy. (Not literally, you understand – I’m staying defiantly Yellow for the foreseeable)

Most unnatural. But still pretty great.

Coincidental

Do you ever get the idea that life is trying to batter your brain into submission, that sometimes the sheer synchronicity is proving to be somewhat difficult to avoid?

Life continues apace, and the time I’m spending in Berkshire is going well (we’ll ignore an episode today with the dog being extremely travel-sick) and all’s looking more and more positive by the day. Upon checking my email tonight, I’ve got mail from an agency about a contract doing WAP and WML work for a company in Bracknell. Talk about synchronised.

I’m not going to go for it – in many ways it would move things far more quickly than we’d be happy with, and also I’m still contracted to Oldham ’til somewhere around the end of the year. But it’s one of those things where yes, everything is conceivable all of a sudden.

I’m gibbering a bit, but all the same – well, it’s just interesting the way life goes, sometimes.

D4D™ is Two

The birthday party yesterday went well. 232,000 words, 1,925 posts, and still going strong. The cake in the shape of a Blogger logo was very successful, but a couple of the other little blogs got too excited, and the jelly and ice-cream made a bit of a mess on the carpet.

Pass-the-parcel was very successful, with little presents of USB sticks and more memory being gratefully received. The little bouncy trigger-jigger toy is already broken, but in general it’s been a pleasant little party, and d4d is now happily asleep with dreams of trucks of jelly and ice-cream, and what the next year will bring.

Central Trains

Fuck Central Trains. Fuck them, and their pox-ridden so-called service. They’ve managed something I thought was actually impossible, and provided a train journey that made me think Virgin weren’t so bloody bad after all. I raise my hat to you, you motherfuckers.

First of all, it’s the prices. £55.00 for a single ticket from Manchester to Norwich. Jesus H Christ with a moneylender on a spear. To get to Reading return costs the same amount. Extortion is alive and well and living in Norfolk. Four and a half hours on a train too, thank frig it’s direct.

Well, direct is a bit of a loose term for it, to be honest. Manchester – Sheffield – double back to Chesterfield – then on to Nottingham, Peterborough, Ely, then turn round again and double back to Thetford and Norwich. About as direct as tagliatelle.

It’d all be OK still though. Get to the station, look at the time-table, and it’s on-time. Yay, bonus. In the time it takes me to get down to the platform, that changes from on-time to “Oh bollocks, didn’t we tell you? It’s 30 mins late.” Grrrrr. Turns out there’s no way they didn’t know, because the cunting bastard motherfrumping tosstwadge had been half an hour delayed on the earlier train to Liverpool, so there was no way the bugger was going to get that back. They’re just all lying cunts. No two ways about it.

Anyway, the train finally arrives, and yes, there’s a table seat. Bonus. I can get some work done. Then the oriental horde of horror arrives. A certain lack of personal hygiene pervades the carriage, and then yes, you guessed it, three of ’em decide my table is fair game. Fair enough, it’s a table, and there’s space. However, the concept of personal space appears to be utterly beyond these backpack-wearing fuckheads, and so while the packs get slung in a pile on a spare seat at the back of the carriage (can you say “Luggage space”, central trains, you arse-licking ring-nudging profit-based flangesuckers?) my ribs then end up black and blue due to the introduction of sharp (and sweaty) oriental elbows into my vicinity. Repeatedly, even after a fairly loud “would you watch where you’re sticking that, you idiotic tosser?”.

What a shocker – knowing that the train’s already delayed, and overcrowded to a “Black Hole of Calcutta” level that gets some travellers (OK, Me) muttering about calling out the EU court of Human Rights, the guard doesn’t make an appearance at all. In fact, the only evidence of there being a guard at all was that there were announcements about each station, accompanied by a “sorry for the delays”. Were they sorry? Were they fuckaslike. If they’d been sorry, or even felt any need to inform the rather pissed-off hordes of anything, they’d have let us know just HOW late the bastard thing really was. If you were lucky enough to be in a position to see a monitor at a station with the expected time of arrival versus when it was supposed to have arrived, then you could figure it out – other than that, you were shit out of luck.

The service (if I can call it that) finally arrived in Norwich at 7.15, having been supposed to arrive at 6.10. No word on where we’d lost another 45 fucking minutes, no apology, nothing. Now, where’s the address for Central Trains customer service director? I’ve still got the (unchecked) ticket, I think there’s going to be some orbital letterage going on…