This week I'll be mostly falling between the cracks

"That which does not kill us
makes us stronger"
- Friedrich Nietzsche

That which does not kill us makes us stronger.  Yeah right:

If you like a bit of risk, and you embrace change, then I can heartily recommend moving house or changing your job - say - once or twice a year.  It doesn't come without its problems though.  I find it takes around 6 months to recover financially from moving house.  It takes about 2 months to get back on track after changing job, plus another month for every week that I'm 'between clients' (what you safe non-risk-takers would call 'out of work').

This week I'll be mostly all hugged out

no picture

Being all hugged out is much the same as being all cried out.  Some of you know what I'm talking about, and it was good to see you all, despite the circumstances.

This week I'll be mostly on the ferry

Welcome aboard the Hythe Ferry.

At ten minutes past six every morning, there's a clatter from the train as it trundles up around 600 yards of track to the end of the pier.  Five minutes later it clatters back, and on it goes, every twenty minutes until late in the evening.  It's a relatively interesting way to wake up; it's up there with sheep, church bells, Jersey cows and peacocks (Oakridge, The Rectory, The Croft and Bywood respectively); it's way more pleasant than the post train or crows (Old Stables and Oakridge).

This week I'll be mostly on the train

"Leaving on the midnight train,
Leaving, never gonna come back again"
- Rossi/Young

It's been around 10 years since I last did a regular amount of commuting on the train.  Back in the early 90s I was getting the Brimsdown to Harlow for a couple of years.  It was a nice little half hour journey, and I didn't appreciate how good I had it.  By the mid 90s I was doing Broadstairs to Tonbridge, one and a half hours on a good day, two changes, one at Margate and one at Ashford.  It was a nightmare, but not quite as bad as driving.  By 2001 I was getting the 4:30 Margate to Victoria, which took two and a half hours to get into London, two and three quarters to get out.  When 9/11 happened and we all emptied out of London expecting to find planes flying into Canary Wharf or whatever, I had a carriage to myself.  The train at platform 5 was due out already and people were quite literally fighting to get on.  Me and handful of other people just went and sat on the later train on platform 7.  When our train left on time with a dozen passengers on it, the platform 5 was still bursting at the seams and the guards still couldn't get all the doors closed.  Since then, I've driven or flown to every place I've worked at.  But we digress.

This week I'll be mostly on the moor

And breathe.

Ah, that's better.

This week I'll be mostly locked in the lavatory

"Oh dear, what can the matter be"
- Trad.

(This isn't about leaving.  Who am I kidding, it totally is.)

I'm in the downstairs toilet, for what will be the last time.  Fortunately (for me), and unfortunately (for you), I have my phone on me.  It's a smart(ish) phone, so not only can I make a phone call, but I can also take a photo, and write some stuff...

This week I'll be mostly leaving the lilies to look after themselves

Thwop

(This is not about leaving.)

I'm not a gardener.  By any stretch of the imagination.

But here's the issue.  I spend the week sitting at a desk looking at words and numbers on a screen, and thinking about uninsured loss recovery, or mid-term adjustments, or catering for both pipe-delimited and comma-separated values, or secure transmission, or stream file integrity checking, or whatever.  So when I get home on the weekend, I walk through the front garden, I just happen to notice some nature that needs attending to, and a primeval instinct kicks in...

This week I'll be mostly on the bus

"Form a line to the front
Form a line to the back"
- Gouldman

(This is not about leaving.)

There's a class of people in Chandler's Ford.  Middle class.  They know how to queue for a bus.  They're British.  They stand quietly and wait patiently.  They're elderly.

This week I'll be mostly at the airport

"This is the last call for the passenger taking
a photo while leaning over the balcony of Costa Coffee,
your flight is now boarding"

So this is it.  The last time I'll be typing a previously-committed-to-memory 6 character code into a 4ft high kiosk.  The last time I'll be asked if I have any liquids or sharp objects on my person.  The last time I'll be trying to pick the queue without the doddery old people, or the numpty teenagers.  The last time I'll be emptying my pockets into a plastic tray.  The last time I'll be randomly frisked on account of being too lazy to shave in the last 4 days.  The last time it will turn out that I have traces of explosive materials on my laptop.  The last time I'll queue up at the cashpoint that dispenses English notes.  The last time I'll be purchasing an overpriced americano.  The last time I'll be sitting on an uncomfortable stool at an undersized dirty table cluttered with other people's coffee cups that hasn't been wiped down since yesterday evening.  The last time I'll be reading Mark Hughes, Gary Anderson or Marcus Pye while being forced to listen to the inane conversation at the table beside me.  The last time I'll be getting out my laptop and writing half a blog while keeping one eye on the departures board.  The last time I'll wait until the queue has gone at the gate before strolling nonchalantly up with my boarding pass and photo id.  The last time I'll find that even though I'm at 16A and I boarded at the rear steps, there's a family of ignorant Liverpudlians who are in row 21 but who boarded at the front and are now walking all the way up to the back and are behaving like it's everyone else who is in their way.  The last time I'll seem to be the only passenger giving the cabin crew my full attention during the safety briefing even though I've heard it a million times before.  The last time I'll get a quick half hour kip at 17,000 ft.  The last time I'll be last off, but first out due to a well timed bit of speed walking, and not having to wait for hold baggage.

This week I'll be mostly getting the builders in

What's an 'ammer for?

I make no apology for the following rash statement.  Builders, you are a bunch of ignorant, rude, lazy, awkward, annoying, inconsiderate and insensitive gits.

Now let me qualify that.  I'm talking about British builders here.  I've seen - for example - German builders on the tv and they are an organised, hard working, efficient lot.  And yes, there are a few decent builders out there, but they are few and far between, and I pity them for having to fight against the tide of scum that is the majority of the building trade in the uk.

And no, I have not forgotten to take my angry pills this week.  And yes, my lovely wife has had to increase her St John's wort intake to keep from storming out and throttling the life out of at least one of you sorry morons.

This week I'll be mostly unconscious on a plane

Erm, where am I?

Back in 2006 I was on the Flybe Exeter to Jersey.  We were about 10 minutes from landing when I started feeling decidedly unwell.  I mean, quite definitely not very well at all in quite a big way.  I frantically worked out where the sick bag was.  Next thing I knew, we'd landed, the plane was empty, and a flight attendant was saying in mono "excuse me sir, are you ok?"  As her voice came back into stereo, I mumbled something, got up and staggered off the plane.  I felt like death warmed up.  I must've looked bad too, because I got stopped by airport security on the way out.

Well that was a bit odd.

This week I'll be mostly running out of tea

"I put my trousers on, have a cup of tea
and I think about leaving the house"
Albarn/Coxon/James/Rowntree 1994

This time last year when Checkers was closing down, we went over on their last day for a bit of legal looting.  The soft drinks aisle was full of hoodies loading their trollies with 2 litre bottles of coke at less than half price.

I was mostly interested in the tea.

I did a quick calculation, and checked the use-by date of every box of Assam they had left on the shelves.  Basically we'd have a year's supply, the last couple of boxes would be just within their use-by date, and it would cost the same as about 6 weeks worth of bog standard tea.  It was a no-brainer.  Wheel the trolley up to the shelf and push the whole lot in.

This week I'll be mostly blogging on the outside

Ctrl-X, Ctrl-V, Ctrl-X ...

If you're reading this (which you are), then you're on Blogger.  Blogger has been owned by Google for about a decade.

If you're paying attention (which you may be), you'll notice that the posts on this blog earlier than 2012 are suspiciously similar to my Facebook Notes.

If you're really paying attention (which you're not - I know this from the stats page), then you and the other two readers of this blog will soon realise that most of what follows has been suspiciously posted elsewhere on the interweb.

So why would I start blogging out here, when I had a perfectly good thing going on in there?  Well...

This week I'll be mostly on a boat

"It's very very nice here"
Bown 2002

Right now I should be sitting at home, with my feet up in front of the fire, reading Autosport.  Instead, I'm on a boat half way across the English Channel.

Why?

Well, yesterday evening I should have been sitting on a plane, with my seat-belt on and my seat-back upright, reading Andrew Benson, Freakonomics, and Bel's Randomness on the Kindle.  Instead, I was on a train from Southampton to Chandlers Ford.

Why?

In a word - fog.

The fog has rolled in across the Channel Islands for a few days, and there is mayhem.  All the flights have been cancelled.  There have been no newspapers (or Autosport) since the mail plane can't land.  You've got hundreds of people at dozens of airports all thinking the same thing - catch the boat.  While BA, Flybe and Blue Islands might be making a loss, the cabbies at Poole harbour and doing a roaring trade between station and ferry terminal.

This week I'll be mostly covered in cellophane

"When you wake in the morning,
wake and find you're covered in cellophane"
Banks/Collins/Rutherford 1981

On Sunday we woke up to a world of white outside.  However, unlike the rest of the British Isles, it wasn't snow.  In the space of a day the folks who farm the surrounding fields had got out there, planted the Jersey Royals, and got the covers on sharpish.

I've thought on occasion that I'd quite like to get out there and give them a hand planting up those cotils.  Or even just help getting the plastic sheeting all lined up nice and tidy.  But I could never be a farmer.  On the one hand, I'd love a working environment that depends on the predictability of the seasons, rather than on next quarter's IT budget of whatever financial services institution I'm working for this month.  But the unremitting, incessant, inexorable relentlessness of it!  That would just freak me out.

This week I'll be mostly in a very, very mad world

It's a very, very,
errr, mumble cough...

For years, in fact decades, a generation of us have convinced ourselves that we know exactly what Roland Orzabal and Curt Smith meant when they sang the line at the end of Mad World: "It's a very, very, mad world, halogeon world".  Or something like that.  When singing along in the back of the car, it was always best to cough or mumble at that point, rather than sing it out loud and embarrass yourself.  Conversations in the school playground, or in later years in the back of a Peugeot 505 estate on the A2, would always end badly: "I think it sounds like imagian."  "Imageean? That's not even a word!"  "Well neither is halogeon."

Of course misheard lyrics are nothing new.  There's a whole website (not a very good one) dedicated to the subject at kissthisguy.com.  Yes, yes, Hendrix: "Excuse me while I kiss this guy".  There was also a survey a while back, listing some favourites like: "See that girl, watch her scream, kicking the dancing queen".