October 2002

October 31st, 2002. In sickness and in health

I feel awful today. After lunch I fell asleep in the office kitchen, in the comfy chair. Eventually, the boss's girlfriend popped her head round the door and said: "maybe you should get to bed. I'm going past your flat; I'll give you a lift."

Maybe I caught the same thing that Stacey has, when I was over in Glasgow at the weekend.

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October 31st, 2002. Last part of Paris

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Everybody was getting different trains back home after the wedding. We all woke up at different times and wandered off into the city without seeing each other and without saying goodbye.

Managing to find the railway station, I caught the RER into the city, and immediately got lost in Chatelet station. I completely couldn't find the line I was looking for, and ended up getting on the Metro on the first platform I found, and working out how to get where I was going later.

I was trying to find the Conservatoire des Arts et Metiérs, partly so I could compare it to the Science Museum (which I'd visited earlier that week), and partly because I'd read Foucault's Pendulum not long before. As it turned out, the museum was rather expensive to get into when I only had an hour or two to spend there, so I decided to just wander round the city a bit instead.

Arts et Metiérs metro station, though, is great. The platforms' roof is copper coloured with little "portholes", and it feels like the inside of Captain Nemo's submarine.

I wandered vaguely around the city without really keeping track of where I was. Unlike here, virtually everywhere in Paris is closed on a Sunday, so there was little I could do other than wander round and look at things - the outsides of Notre Dame, the City Hall, the Louvre and the Opera House. The road on the right bank of the river was closed too, with walkers and cyclists wandering all over it enjoying the sunlight. I was getting more relaxed about being abroad, and amused myself by spotting all the British families on holiday poring through their guidebooks and squinting at the metro map. I only panicked once, looking the wrong way crossing a road and nearly getting hit by a car. Oh, and I got very confused trying to work out which bits of Place Vendôme were road and which were pavement.

Eventually, I managed to amble up Rue de la Fayette and found Gare du Nord just in time to check in for my train. The British customs officer waved me through as soon as he saw "United Kingdom" on the cover of my passport, and I was almost back in Britain already. All the shops in the terminal waiting area looked like ordinary British ones, but with signs at the counter saying "We don't take Sterling, only Euros". It felt so normal, it was bizarre to realise that all the shops' staff would be French, and it was a very odd feeling to look outside the window of the very British terminal and see a Paris street.

On the train, I fell asleep right away. Seeing France go past outside wasn't a novelty any more. After two whole days, I was a proper International Traveller. I woke up briefly and saw darkness outside the window; I woke up again and saw Kent.

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October 30th, 2002. also, I should have added...

This will be the first time I've seen The Parents face-to-face since February. Since then, I've made several big decisions about me and my life and started off on important new paths; none of which I've felt able to talk to them about. I'm not going to be able to put it off forever, and I'm wondering if now will be the time.

Don't be surprised if I go all introspective and/or revelatory in the next few days.

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October 30th, 2002. Would you pass by on the other side?

(this is the third time I've started writing this only to have something bad happen to the computer and lose it)

Ever since I left university, I've tried to avoid people I knew there. This is because of the way in which I left; I walked away, without telling them I'd realised my PhD research was going nowhere, and there was no way I would be able to come to any interesting conclusions with the data I would be able to get. I was almost broke; I wouldn't have been able to survive much longer without leaving university and signing on. As I didn't let the university know any of this, I imagine they don't think much of me. That's why I avoid them.

Someone I knew spotted me yesterday, and I couldn't get away. Someone from university; the American Geographer. I was curling up with embarrassment, but managed to talk. We chatted about how everyone is leaving our old department, "like rats and the ship."

I'm never going to be able to avoid bumping into people I used to know; this city's too small not to. I've probably walked past people like Richard, Sarah, Peter and Nine many times in the street without realising.

Incidentally, I think I'm getting ill again. I couldn't sleep all night for coughing, and my head has been full of small headaches since yesterday afternoon. I'd better get well again by Saturday, because The Parents are coming up for a visit as it's Dad's birthday.

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October 28th, 2002. So what happened with the MGW?

The weekend was good. I went out, danced, stayed over at Matt's place, then wandered around Glasgow with people for a while.

Matt lives in a lovely big flat, on his own. The spare bedroom, though, is bizarre. It's a small room with a high ceiling, so the bed is up above the wardrobe, at the top of a red-painted ladder. A little fence stops you falling ten feet to the floor in your sleep. Of course, the light by the bed is burned out, so you have to climb the ladder in the dark.

(actually, a little research shows that both bedrooms are like that. You can even see pictures.)

Of course, I didn't wake up until long after dawn, so I didn't have to worry about getting back down. I watched Saturday morning TV and made myself a cup of tea until Matt got out of bed; then we went off for lunch with people. We tried to harrass the staff in Borders, but none of the people we knew seemed to be around. So we all went to the pub instead, because - well, what else could we do?

Tomorrow I'm off work, because The Boss is off to Glasgow for meetings with various different people. I'm going to stay in and try to write a story about talking cats. Talking cats that swear a lot, though, not cutesy ones.

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October 27th, 2002. Set phasers to blow-dry

The ion pipes, and all the other silly hairdryer superscience, reminds me of the plan I had once to write a sci-fi pantomime. It never got very far, because it only really had one idea and that was for the costumes: the characters' weapons would be ordinary hair dryers, plugged into power sockets on their belts or something. The actors could make their own "ZAP! POW!" noises too. It was all going to be very daft; it's just a shame I never thought up a plot or anything.

My horoscope today said this coming week will be full of ideas and inspiration. Maybe I'll be walking to work tomorrow and an idea for a space pantomime will just drop out of the sky.

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October 25th, 2002. Ion pipes

It's freezing here at the Interweb Tat Emporium, because the heating keeps breaking down. The useless builders (see many previous entries) are putting new floorboards down, and keep putting nails through the underfloor heating pipes then pretending nothing's wrong. And this is without the dangerously incompetant one who nearly made the building collapse.

K recently decided that I need a makeover. Last night, we went shopping. We walked up and down Princes Street in the rain, visiting places like the Ikea of the clothing world. K had decided I should get a long corduroy jacket. For some reason, all the corduroy jackets that were in the shops a month ago have now vanished; we found one that was nice and long, in H&M, and it was about three sizes too big for me.

So, I didn't buy any clothes, but I did buy a hairdryer. K almost started drooling as soon as we arrived at the hairdryer aisle in Boots. "Some people know cars," she said. "Some people know all the ins and outs of music. I know hairdryers." She went up and down the aisle saying things like "look, this one's got six heat and speed combinations! This comes with a free styling guide! This one's got an ion pipe!"

I looked at the back of the box. "Ion pipe, to give your hair an ionic shine," it said. A little picture showed a glowing mist shooting out of the pipe. "Ionic on/off switch!" I wasn't convinced. Then, paying for the one I did buy almost gave me a heart attack, when my Switch card was refused by the till about five times in a row, even when the bloke was typing the number in. I'm going to try to forget that happened, and take my chequebook when I go out tonight Just In Case.

I've decided I want a little wooly hat with ear-flaps, but I don't think K would approve. "You have to buy a hat last," she said, "so it fits with the rest of your outfit."

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October 24th, 2002. Come here tiger, let me stroke you

This morning's top news story: 37% of the British population is infected with the parasite toxoplasmosis gondii, which tries to turn them into risk-taking cat lovers.

(I'm *sure* I heard this on the Today Programme this morning, but I can't find anything at all about it on the 'net. The closest I could find is this BBC News report from the other month, which seems to be about the same thing, but has rather different details.)

The Recipe Tree's latest entries are now up: spicy food from Feather Boa.

And it's National Pop League tomorrow night! Yay!

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October 23rd, 2002. More winter

I've just looked out of the office window, and there's snow on the hills south of the city!

Time to go home.

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October 23rd, 2002. Startled

As I was sitting at my desk this morning blogsurfing working terribly hard, my mobile rang.

"Hello?"

I knew I recognised the voice, but I couldn't quite place it. Then, the penny dropped. It was The Mad Ex-Flatmate.

I can't remember how much I've said about the Mad Ex-Flatmate before. Basically, she lived with me for several years, never paying the rent on time or her share of the bills. At the start of January, she ran off to mid-Wales to live with her boyfriend, giving me three day's notice and owing me over a thousand pounds in rent. She didn't tell her boyfriend about the solicitors' letters she was getting from people like the Student Loans Agency, or various mail-order companies.

Anyway, after she moved out, I suddenly found that she hadn't been paying the electricity bill for some time. The power company didn't seem too bothered, though, and whenever they sent me a nasty letter I'd phone them up to explain the situation, that she owed me large wodges of cash too, and pass on what little contact info I had. In the meantime, I kept the electricity bill in her name, which the power company seemed fine about.

So, anyway, today she phones me. It's the first time she's done anything like that since she moved out. I realise now this means it must be pretty important, as she'd normally do anything to avoid getting in touch with people she used to know (like her dad, for example). It turns out, the power company has tracked her down to Llareggub (or wherever it is she lives) and sent her a bill. For about a thousand quid, most of which was run up before she moved away from Edinburgh.

"I'm not paying it all," she told me. "I'll pay it up until I moved out, but you can pay the rest. It's about £300."

What I should have said, of course, is: "hang on, what about the £1250 you still owe me in rent? If you can afford a £700 electricity bill, you can afford to pay me back too. If you're not willing to pay me back, I'm going to keep your name on the bills until you do."

I didn't, of course. I was too startled. What I actually said was more like: "Um... I'll write them a letter about it. I'll explain it to them."

"I'll write to them too," she replied, and hung up straight away. She was desperate for me not to mention all the cash she owes me, I imagine. I wish I had something about it in writing.

I really need to get another flatmate - I just can't afford to pay the rent on my own for much longer - but I'm scared. I'm worried I'd end up with another lunatic who doesn't pay the bills, tries to borrow money off me, lies about why she needs it and where she'll repay me from, and then runs off without paying several months' rent.

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October 22nd, 2002. Wind and grey skies

Hello, incidentally, to all the people who followed the links from BBC Scotland's weblog, Richard Bloomfield, or from Wherever You Are, all of whose links seem to have popped up recently. I hope you all like the place.

Winter is definitely coming in now. The cat woke me miaowing at the front door at 6.30am, and as soon as he came in crawled right under my duvet, soaking wet. Walking across the Meadows to work, the wind kept blowing other people's umbrellas in my face.

All weekend I was sneezing, and could hardly get to sleep for my blocked-up sinuses. At Maddie's recommendation, I've started drinking echinacea and raspberry tea, to try to get my immune system up a bit so it doesn't stay like this until March.

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October 20th, 2002. Paris: The Wedding Party

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After we'd settled down in our hotel, the coach drove us out to the next town, to the wedding party. It took us to a large country restaurant on the banks of the Seine. On the opposite bank was a small town, scattered up a hillside.

We got out of the coach, and saw the bride and groom strolling along the river bank, arm in arm. "Awww!" said everyone, "how romantic!" Then, we noticed it was all set up; the wedding cameraman was ahead of them filming. Everyone took their cameras out to take their own pictures, and Catherine and Arnaud turned to pose, smiling and laughing. "NO!" everyone shouted. "Stop posing! Look natural!"

The restaurant staff brought out large bowls of Sangria-like punch, and we stood on the riverbank chatting and getting drunk. People pointed out the house where the groom's family lived, on the hillside just across the river. "Aw, it looks so nice," I said, just before a long freight train started roaring through their back garden. We stood in little groups, mingling slightly, and spying on the French people to see if any of them looked particularly French.

It was, of course, very easy to tell which wedding guests were French and which were British. Right away, you could just look at them and work it out. Some people were so obviously French it was comic; such as the woman with the leathery tan, rectangular glasses and copper bouffant hair, who looked as if she spent her life relaxing on the Riviera. She seemed to be with a man with swept-back, blue rinsed grey hair, who just impressed us with his general Frenchness. We imagined that his friends must all call him the Silver Fox, and muttered things like: "Le reynard d'argent - mais oui!" As it turned out, he runs a car factory somewhere, and is probably incredibly rich.

The meal and the party is all a bit of a blur, to be frank. It was a long, long time, with a lot of courses and toasting and speeches and performances and bad dancing. Seven courses altogether, if you include the coffee at the end. There would be a course, then a break for someone to read a poem or make a speech, then more food, more wine, maybe some dancing. The best men had put together a slide show of the bride and groom's baby pictures, but because they'd done it in Powerpoint it took them half an hour to get it to work. The dancing included a batch of French traditional dances that all the English people had no clue about, and lots of mid-90s pop that the French people had never heard before. And then, they brought out the wedding cakes.

With it being such an Anglo-French wedding (the dinner menu had a picture of a frog with a rose in its mouth - try explaining that to the French guests), there were naturally two wedding cakes. The usual multi-tier fruit cake, made by Skeltons of Grimsby, and a French wedding cake. French wedding cake is ... well, odd. I'm not really sure if this one is typical, but it was made of hundreds of custard profiteroles, piled up into two large cones. These were then glued together with a dark, toffee-like concoction, and surrounded with a different type of thick toffee with nuts in, which was far too hard for me to bite into. The whole ensemble was brought out with Roman candles fizzing on top of it, and looked very impressive, but was far too sweet for me to eat very much of. Presumably, the iced and marzipan-coated fruit cake seemed bizarre to the French people, too.

I was rather surprised, in fact, that I was able to eat any cake at all, given that it was course 6 of a seven course dinner. Spreading it out over so many hours was the only way to fit in all the smoked salmon, grilled fish, roast lamb, and everything else we were fed. Plus, it left plenty of time for the dancing, or (in my case) standing on the dancefloor waving my arms about. I vaguely remember getting involved in the can-can, but being completely unable to keep time with everyone, or remember which leg I was supposed to be using. I also vaguely remember a drunk Frenchman playing with my hair, which was quite frightening. At five in the morning, we all made it back to the hotel and into bed, but I hardly remember that at all.

next part »

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October 19th, 2002. Strange details, so far this weekend

I was in Tesco, buying some lunch. And a lemon meringue pie, because it was sat on the shelf looking yum. Anyway. I was in Tesco, buying some lunch, and the cashier had two things in her blouse pocket. A bank card, and some sort of religious leaflet. Jesus is the light of the world, and that sort of thing. It seemed a little strange.

Then, reading a Guardian article about Donna Tartt, I found that my mother is exactly the same height as Lolita. Somehow I don't think I'm going to forget that, but it's an odd fact to have floating in your head.

(the parents are popping up for a day trip, two weeks today. I have to think of some way to entertain them for an afternoon.)

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October 18th, 2002. More travel reports to come

I still haven't finished going on about Paris yet, even though it's been at least six weeks now since I got back. I'm going to try and finish it off today. Or tomorrow. Or by the end of the weekend at the latest.

Mike recently wrote that he didn't think anyone would be interested in more of his holiday stories, because he wasn't very interested in other people's. It's made me a little reluctant to finish off my What I Did In Paris stories, in case my readers (all 3 of them!) think the same way.

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October 17th, 2002. Winterlight

Zannah has, with her blog, reminded me that I'm going to have to find a different way home from work in a few weeks.

So far, I've been walking backwards and forwards through the Meadows and across Bruntsfield Links every day, because it's the shortest route, and it's nice and away from all the traffic. Soon, though, it's going to be dark when I'm on my way home, and I'm not too sure about walking across the Meadows in the dark. There are always stories of people getting attacked and so on; the university library always seemed to have big signs saying "Don't cross the Meadows on your own after dark!" and arrangements for people to go home in convoy.

I need to find a new route home, that's not too long, that I can take in the dark. If anyone knows Edinburgh and can think of a quick way to get from Church Hill to the Holyrood Tavern, suggest it in the comments box.

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October 17th, 2002. International Women of Mystery

It was time to pick up the package. I was prepared. I was ready. I'd wandered round Sainsburys adding carefully, so I would end up with the right amount of change I needed. I knew exactly where the package had been left.

Furtively, I walked over to the bus station lockers. It was getting dark. I looked around, looking to see anyone who might be watching what I was doing. It felt as if I should be wearing some sort of disguise. In my pocket was a slip of paper, on which I'd written the secret code for retrieving the package. Just a line of numbers, so if anyone saw the slip I could deny everything. Or eat it, or something.

The locker door sprang open, and I gazed inside. And there it was. The CD that Sarah had made, and left there for me to pick up. And it's great! Thank you, Sarah!

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October 15th, 2002. Pretentious?

I'm thinking of setting up a Reviews page on the site, for books and music. I've been feeling inspired by reviews pages such as the ones at suebailey.net, or lostharbour.org. Hopefully combining book and music reviews together will make some sort of sense in the long run.

You might have to wait a while for me to write some, of course.

On a similar theme: more recipes in the recipe tree. They should really have been up on Friday, but I bet nobody realised.

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October 14th, 2002. Can I have some caffeine now, please?

I'm still trying to wake up, after a weekend which involved lots of drink, and lots of time on the dancefloor. I definitely wouldn't call what I do "dancing" though. It went something like: pub, pub, club, someone's sofa, pub, pub, home.

The club was the Winchester Club, which is very good; you all really should go. Even though the DJs are all indie-muso types, they do play rather good stuff that you can dance to. Or, like me, that you can wave your arms about to like a nutter. They also have bands playing; this month it was My Legendary Girlfriend, who are both very indiepop and very Scottish. Apparently the Winchester Club have their own website and everything now, but I've not managed to find the URL yet.

I stayed over in Dennistoun with Lucy, one of their DJs, on her living room floor on top of a heap of sofa cushions. Having nothing to do the next morning, I read the first 6 Lemony Snicket books whilst waiting for her and her boyfriend to get up. They were fair enough, but not quite as good as Laura had led me to believe. I found his writing style a bit irritating at first, and the subtler jokes (such as random Agatha Christie references, or introducing a pair of characters called 'Isadora' and 'Duncan') were a bit too far apart to be entertaining; they looked more like attempts to be clever.

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October 11th, 2002. You Need A Mess Of IDE Cables To Stand Alone

Work hasn't been fun this week. Computers breaking down round my ears, it feels like. We had to turn the office server off on Tuesday so the plumber could get underneath it to fix the heating pipes; and it decided it didn't want to turn itself back on again.

So, the rest of my week was spent pulling the box apart and trying to resurrect some horrible Frankensteinian machine from its remains, and the computer parts scattered in various drawers around the room. We ended up with a typical S&M Ltd Morningside Interweb Tat Emporium solution; a computer whose inside is an unmanageable rats-nest of ribbon cable, and whose interior parts are held in place with a combination of old floorboards and duct-tape. Yes, really. I persuaded The Boss to spend ages carefully whittling down floorboard-splinters left behind by the idiot joiner, to make up for a slight shortage of parts that fitted together properly.

In other news, we got a new employee. Well, she was press-ganged.

I was sat in the office, taking things apart, when I heard a piercing scream. A very loud one. I assumed The Boss's girlfriend had just realised I was taking her computer apart in the hope of finding something I could mend the server with. "That'll be a mouse," said The Boss. He went away for a while, and came back with his mother's cat, who he locked in various rooms around the building. "It's to scare the mice away," he said. "The cat wouldn't have a clue how to catch one. At least, I hope she doesn't." I could hear her miaowing all afternoon.

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October 9th, 2002. Swan in the city

You know those stereotypical images of deprived Irish housing estates, with feral horses running about? I saw something today that made me think of that.

I was walking home from the supermarket, through the estate, just as it was getting dusk - about 7pm, or so. As I came down the steps to my street, I saw a man carrying something, with lots of children shouting.

He was carrying a young swan, under his arm; young enough to have large brown patches in its plumage. At first, I thought it was dead; but I saw it move its head about to see where it was being taken. He was followed by a dog, black and white, and by a crowd of small boys, all about 7 or 8 years old and mostly carring big sticks. They shouted things like "What is it?" and "she's scared oaf the dug."

The dog followed closely, jumping up to sniff at the bird. The man said: "Oi! down!" and it moved away, trotting alongside. The swan hissed, and the children straggled behind, shouting things and dragging their sticks and pieces of wood. The man and his dog took the steps leading down to Holyrood Park; the children stayed hanging around in my street, trying to see where he was going.

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October 9th, 2002. Fssshhhhhh..... BANG!

Firework season has started already. After dark they get let off, and the next morning the area is littered with damp used rockets.

They startle me. The other night, walking to the chip shop, I was so on edge that every time someone came suddenly round a corner I would jump visibly.

I worry about the cat, too; whether they will scare him into running away, or whether one will hit him. Then again, I'm always worrying about the cat. I worry about too many things.

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October 8th, 2002. Psychology-o-matic

You know all those "personality tests" with graphics to put on your site? Why not just ignore the buttons and do several at once?

I am a liberal airhead indie music snob.

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October 7th, 2002. Camping site?

Out of my living room window, you can see Salisbury Crags. For those of you who don't know Edinburgh: Salisbury Crags are a line of cliffs that run through Holyrood Park. They drop at least 50 feet to a path that runs along the foot, and then there is a steep slope that falls for a couple of hundred feet or so. This slope must be about 60 degrees or so; it's clearly possible for some people to scramble up it, but I know I could never manage to.

Anyway, the other morning, I opened the curtains and looked out of the window. And halfway up this slope, someone had pitched a tent.

I was sure it was there, and I wasn't just imagining it. A little blue dome tent, exactly midway up this very steep slope. Hardly possible to get to. Tricky to sleep on without rolling away. But it was definitely there. By the time I next looked, that evening, it had gone.

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October 6th, 2002. Who put the bop in the bopshebopshebop?

I still haven't mentioned National Pop League last week. Um, it was very good, and I'll probably get myself along there this month as well.

It was very quiet when we got there; a big room with lots of tables and chairs and a few people sat in the corners. John The Pop League DJ popped over to say hello when he saw us arrive. After it got busy, some people even went on the dance floor. I might even have been seen dancing occasionally.

It got very hot in there. Everybody was red-faced and gasping, and energetic people glistened. People tried to talk to me, but I couldn't here a thing they were saying. The mirrors on the walls misted up, and people wrote things like "I ♥ NPL" in the mist. By closing time the air seemed solid inside and outside crip and cool, but even so nobody wanted to stop dancing.

Yes, I'll definitely try to get there again next month.

(incidentally, that bit up there is supposed to say "I *heart* NPL")

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October 5th, 2002. Genuinely not that good?

The other day, I stayed in in the evening watching telly, and saw Faking It. In case you don't know, the idea of the show is that they take a random person and teach them an entirely new career in one month. Then, they have to do some sort of test against people who do that thing professionally, and judges try to spot which is the fake. Things like naval officer into drag queen, classical cellist into club DJ, or unemployed archaeologist into professional geek (no, actually, that last one was my career path).

Anyway, you get the the end of the program, and the subject has a big test of their ability to put on a drag show, or direct a TV programme, compete as a showjumper, or whatever they've trained as. And they're competing against people who have been doing this for years and get paid for it and everything. And at the end, the judges say: "Hmmm ... I think you look like someone who only started doing this four weeks ago." But most of the time, the contestant doesn't get picked. It's one of the 'control subjects' who gets singled out as the one who doesn't look like they know what they're doing. That must feel *so* bad.

After reading the website, I found that although the main subject is told the result straight away, the controls don't find out the judges' decision until a couple of days later; which probably takes the shock of it away slightly. But it still think it would be an awfully cruel thing to happen to someone.

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October 5th, 2002. Slight clarification

Since I started my current job, whenever I've been talking about it here, I've refferred to the place as "S&M Ltd". This is because a) The Boss regularly checks his Google ranking, so there's no way I'm going to use the real company name, b) it is, however, similar to the real company name, and c) I occasionally get little hints that him and his girlfriend are into BDSM, so it seemed rather appropriate.

I've suddenly found, however, that there's a real company, based round here, that is genuinely called S&M Ltd. And they're a law firm. Ooops. I really don't want to get sued, so I'd better point out that I don't work for any sort of law company, or any company actually known as S&M. I made the name up.

Now, of course, I have to think of something new to call The Boss's company. Suggestions, anyone?

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October 4th, 2002. No, honestly, it's definitely not porn

Yesterday, Peter wrote about how he feels worried about meeting people he knows through blogging. I added a comment to say that, although I've met a lot of people in real life after meeting online, I still feel nervous about it, and I'd definitely feel uneasy meeting someone who only knew me from what I write here.

So, of course, the only thing I could do last night was go to the pub with someone from The Internet that I'd never met before. I was invited to go out by Arik, a one-time Gnome Project übergeek, who says he's given all that computery stuff up now. So he's spending his college vacation (yes, I know it's at an odd time of year) in Britain, temping or whatever, and travelling round the country meeting up with people who he only knows via the 'net.

Like all indiekids, his jacket is peppered with wee badges. I was sure one rang a bell with me from somewhere; the letters "SG" in pink. He reminded me of where it was from; a website that I looked at once, that appeared to be one of the most pleasantly bizarre places I've seen on the net. Suicidegirls.com, a freakishly bizarre site (in the nicest kind of way, I'm sure) where they show pictures of indie-subculture girls not wearing many clothes.

"It's not porn," he said, "It's definitely not porn. Everyone at my college is very much against porn, the normal objectified kind. But this isn't that at all." He explained how there's a whole community there, apart from the "girls", who are enitrely in control of everything that gets shown; indeed, more girls seem to be queuing up to join. They have forums and message-boards and journals for the members. He wasn't going to get involved, but an old friend found him via the site, and he ended up going to their anniversary party night, and getting to know all the people personally. So, as he's in Britain, he's going to pop down to London to meet up with some of the English members and models.

"Before I moved here," he said, "I'd been seeing this girl I met at their party. She's not one of the 'girls' yet, but she will be soon - I've seen the photos she's going to put up. That'll be weird - this is someone I've kissed, and there's going to be pictures of her naked on the internet."

"It's growing too fast," he said. "Right now, it's a community. But it's getting too big. I kind of don't want anyone else to find out about it, because I just know it's going to go lame any day now."

I've not looked at it myself - you have to pay to see everything. But it looks like an incredibly bizarre place. In the nicest possible way, of course. Arik kept saying: "It's not porn."

11:54 Comments (0)

October 2nd, 2002. Rest and relaxation

I had the day off today, so I didn't have to go in to work and worry all the time whether or not the building was about to crash down around my ears. The electricians wanted to rewire the place, and turn all the power off all day, so I stayed at home, drank cups of tea, watched Countdown and Fifteen To One and caught up on my email.

(yes, I know, I get a day away from my desk and my computer, and I spend it sat at my home computer doing my email. I should have got away from it all and walked up Arthur's Seat or something.)

19:57 Comments (4)

October 1st, 2002. A bit fishy?

Today's top story: my old home town's MP, Austin Mitchell, has changed his surname to Haddock, in order to support our national fishing fleet. Is it just me, or does anyone else think he should spend his time doing practical stuff rather than publicity stunts?

And does anyone else, when they see packets of cod in the supermarket, think: "ooh, better have some now; they'll be extinct in a year or two."

(And did anyone else look at the picture in the news story linked above and think Tony Blair was trying to vomit?)

19:18 Comments (0)

October 1st, 2002. Fun With Concrete

As I've mentioned before, we have the builders in at the moment at the S&M Ltd office. We've had them in for about five weeks of what was supposed to be a six-week contract, and they are nowhere near finished yet.

We have one builder in particular, a joiner, who was hired to take up the floorboards. The floorboards all got taken up a couple of weeks ago, but he's still here. He doesn't seem to have anything better to do, because he's always the first here every morning and he always starts interfering with whatever work is supposed to be going on; plumbing, electrics, whatever.

The reason the builders are here is to knock two rooms through into one. They've taken down a wall and replaced it with a big I-beam supported by two hefty brick pillars. The pillars have to take the weight of the upstairs and stop the whole place collapsing.

The other day, The Boss noticed a couple of cracks had appeared upstairs, above the building work. He came down, and found that, to make it easier to fit some heating pipes, the idiot joiner had cut away a big hole in the base of one of these pillars. In fact, he'd cut away about half of it. The Boss understandably panicked, and got on the phone to a friendly civil engineer who popped round and arranged for the roof to be shored up whilst the pillar was rebuilt.

"How long will the shoring need to be in for?" asked the boss. "A week or so," said the engineer.

That was yesterday. This morning, I turned up for work and saw two big metal props lying in the front garden. The sort you'd use for, say, shoring up a ceiling.

The idiot joiner had turned up at 8am, as per usual. He'd gone into the room, seen all this scaffolding propping the room up, and had clearly thought: "ah, we don't need that." The first thing he did was whip them back out and leave upstairs to be supported by a bit of still-damp cement. Wonderful. The Boss, of course, went spare as soon as he saw it. I'm just sat here waiting for the building to fall down around me.

13:39 Comments (0)