Oh, and one really easy way to wind me up: call to offer an upgrade on my mobile phone – at midafternoon on a Sunday. I mean, who would?! Carphone Warehouse apparently. I told him very politely (all things considered) to go away.
And then they called again on Monday.
Twice.
Second time, I asked the girl to please note my answer on my records and cease calling me. She was very sweet and explained that she would try but couldn't guarantee that. I sweetly explained that she should note on my records that the next caller from CP would be taking instruction from me to cancel the contract entirely.
She then proceeded to tell me that someone calling from her department couldn't take a cancellation and that I'd need to call –
At which point I informed her that as a trade journalist I knew very well that actually they could take the instruction and pass it on to the relevant department and that the whole business of calling someone else and being passed from pillar to post was specifically designed to make canceling too hard to bother with. I have no idea whether this is true or not, but it sounded good and made her squeak and promise that no one would call me from CP ever, ever again. Ever. A promise that will last until next week if I'm lucky.
That Monday on the way home, I received the biggest shock I have ever had on a train. Not a Southeastern type shock because they no longer have the capability of doing that short of doing a jig on the third rail.
I was standing up, squinched between someone's armpit and someone else's rear end, as is usual on the 1742 at least until Bromley South, and with a practiced roll of the wrists opened my Evening Standard on exactly the page with the puzzles. Only to find that they've taken away my favourite puzzles! How dare they?! I stood staring at a silly anagram thing and 30-second number thing as my brain attempted to process the concept that what should be there wasn't.
Where was the warm-up Battleship puzzle? And more to the point, where was the juicy Killer Sudoku that usually keeps me occupied all the way home? I am henceforth boycotting the Standard. Except I haven't because it's the only decent free paper around in the evening.
Last Tuesday I went to Derby. It is a surprisingly quick trip from Ashford, just over two hours if you make the right connection. I didn't.
So with time to waste at St Pancras, and a sunny day outside, I wandered over to the British Library which has this nifty outdoor area with strange statues in it.I didn't really see Derby itself as my appointment was at the college which is directly out the back end of the station. I did see the Roundhouse which is now a college building, and observed several car showrooms as I made my way around to the college building that I needed. It was a fun day, which can be seen in pictures (not mine!) here and may give you a clue as to what I do all day. Note that there are no pics of me. Well, there was one of me scribbling furiously and it was really unflattering so I deleted it.
Talking of unflattering. I discovered last week that if my histamine levels are up, then I can be slightly allergic to wine in the form of bee-stung lips. I now know that any form of lip-plumping treatment is most likely to leave me looking like a psychotic trout.
The census came and went. I toyed with the idea of filling it out from the point of view of a Martian, but decided against in the end. Maybe next time.
Last weekend I spent running around Brands Hatch with a fire extinguisher putting out cars that had been set alight. On purpose and complete with fuel-soaked mattresses in the back. It was quite surprising how much fire putting out one can do from up to six meters away from the flames.Oh, and there were motorbikes racing around the Indy loop all day to keep us amused during breaks.
On the way home in the dark the other night I spotted an animal boinking across my road. It was black and silver, about the size of a large rat, had a pointy face, short legs and a fluffy tail. It stopped, and boinked back the other way as I approached. I stopped, then tipp-toed towards it and it boinked back again, disappearing under my neighbour's car. I tippy-toed onto my neighbour's drive a little bit, and it boinked out from under the car onto my feet. For anyone interested this excitable little creature is henceforth known as a 'greater twisted boinking binbag'.
Yesterday morning's treat on the train was a woman screaming at her husband down the phone. The things that he was guilty of ranged from mental abuse to unappreciation, from housework incompetance to narrow-minded frigidity (note that this latter was to do with his refusal to go to a wife-swapping party with her), and many other things that make me want to wash my brain. And as she was screaming this at 120 decibels or higher in the middle of a crowded railway carriage, and managed to carry it on for a good twenty minutes, I'm not convinced that it was him that needed the straight-jacket.
I've been reviewing Star Trek: Deep Space 9, the only Star Trek series I've never really watched because it originally showed in the late 90s, around the same time as Babylon 5, which was a far, far superior show. But DS9 does make for amusing wallpaper because you don't really need to pay a lot of attention to know what's going on. The early cancellation of B5 versus the extended seven year lifetime of DS9 only confirms my belief that American audiences don't like shows to be clever.
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