Drop, cough and sunshine

Today the sun shined in Manchester. Woo hoo! Having been travelling abroad a lot for work, I’ve not really experienced the full horror of this year’s summer. It’s rained and rained and rained. When it’s not been raining, it’s looked like it was shortly about to rain. Hull and Tewkesbury were both very flooded, although Tewkesbury got vastly more coverage as it’s in the South. Hull is also rumoured to look better underwater. God, imagine discovering the lost city of Atlantis; only to find that it looked like Hull!

I had my pilot’s medical today, which means that I’m now OK to keep flying for the next four years. It’s always a bit nervy about these sorts of things, but it’s oddly pleasing to be told that there are no latent signs of anything wrong. No matter how secure one might feel in general, there's nothing to quite get around the dread that accompanies that instruction to cough as one stands there in naught but underpants. What's that for anyway? I feel a bit of "world wide interweb" research coming on. If anybody happens to know, please leave the answer as a comment below.

Facebook

Just in case you're somebody who tunes into this site at all frequently, I apologise for the lack of posts recently. It's not that I've had nothing to talk about. Since my last post, I have (in chronological order):

• Travelled again to Jamaica and had a rather nice time. That's the subject of a reasonably detailed post that I'll do soon. I'm now growing to like Jamaica as much as I've always liked the people I work with there.
  
• Been selected for "secondary" immigration questionning at Fort Lauderdale airport (I was the only white person in a waiting room of 45 others, which I still find troubling).
• Had a rather pleasant couple of days in Fort Lauderdale.
• Met some lovely and interesting people in Fort Lauderdale at a very tasteful gay only hotel.
  
• Made a recorded complaint about the sarcastic attitude of a security guy in the flight connections centre at Heathrow (sorry, but there's no excuse even though I appreciate they often deal with knobheads). I consider tackling petty officiousness to be nothing less than a citizen's duty. I shudder to think that there are tens of thousands of foreigners who change planes at Heathrow, for whom the flight connections centre is the only taste they get of this country.
  
• Begun to panic about how a fairly small job I'm doing for BPP and how it's taking forever.
• Been offered a fairly interesting sounding job outside the UK, but I can't tell you about that because I don't know who might be reading this.

but above all....

I discovered "Facebook". I hated it at first, because most of the posts you'll see (between users you don't know because they're friends of friends of friends of friends) are just teenage witter in text-talk. Ahem, "LOL". I think it can be too habit forming and I'm right on the edge. It can be interesting and useful though if used carefully. I've got back in contact with a few people who I'd lost contact with. I recommend it, but set yourself some limits such as NEVER using it during work hours and limiting how much time you spend on it each day. It's a bit like thinking you can handle crack cocaine though; be warned.

Text talk

Oh, how much do I hope that the current affectation of using text-talk will pass? I understand how such things as “m8” for “mate” and “LOL” for either “laughing out loud” or “lots of love” developed in the days when text messages cost a lot of cash and were laborious to write. Nowadays though, all phones have predictive text messaging and texts are much cheaper to send. There is thus little need for these affectations and there’s no need or excuse whatever when using a keyboard.

Sadly, I note a tendency to use these things even when using a keyboard to send emails. There is positively no excuse whatever for “neway” in place of “anyway”. This is especially as it took me some time to realise it meant N.E.way rather than new-way. “LOL” seems to have taken the place of exclamation marks, the latter having been so acutely overused that they no longer had any meaning to less articulate teenagers (and the middle aged attempting against all the odds and the evidence to appear still young).

I really do loathe this. I know I’m a miserable bastard, but I truly loathe it.

I have also noticed that text-talker types are prone to having their phone speakers play tinny music in public places. Said people are also likely to choose the Morse sms (… -- …) as their sms alert tone. Invariably, anybody who selects that tone also selects it at maximum volume. It’s a hallmark of idiocy.

If I reply to any messages sent to me using this form of nonsense, I shall do so employing my own derivative code. I shall, for example, spell mate as m-eight. Hopefully, this will greight on the nerves of text talking types as much as their bullshit patois gr8s on mine.

Barats and Bareta

If you haven’t yet discovered the rather wonderful college humour (well, strictly, humor) of Barats and Bareta, I suggest you have a look at their website.

In particular, “Other Son” had me laughing out loud when I first saw it. Listen out for the “My Dad!” exclamation. Watch it and it will make sense. Then look at "Cubicle Wars".

When I said laughing out loud, I meant it literally. I don’t use horrid “LOL” chatroom text-talk affectation that is so depressingly prevalent. No, I shall not say prevalent; I shall say common.

For the benefit of anybody not from working class Wigan, there is no greater insult than to be called common. It’s the old fashioned term for chav.

Creative Genuis by Skoda

Skodas used to be jokes of cars. It’s a little known fact that in Czech (where they’re made), the word skoda means “pity” or “shame”. They don’t make a big deal about that, but I feel oddly pleased at knowing it.

They’re great cars now and I own one myself. They have a lovely advert on TV at the moment where, bizarrely, a group of cooks bake a cake the shape and size of a new Skoda Fabia. See it here if you’ve not already seen it. The slogan is “Skoda Fabia: full of lovely stuff", which I think is immensely cleverly evocative. Another slogan is “Skoda: manufacturer of happy drivers”. Brilliant, just brilliant.

It’s a fantastic advert; really creative. It also generates much conversation and some heated debate on whether it’s genuine or a fake, which further adds to its efficacy and brilliance. How many adverts really get noticed, let alone get people talking about them? A friend of mine is entirely convinced that it’s a normal Skoda Fabia, covered in a thin layer of icing. I’m considering nicknaming him “Grassy Knoll” from now on.

The soundtrack is “Favourite Things” from the Sound of Music, thus confirming that Skoda Fabias are exclusively intended to be driven carefully by women and gay men. Although I’ve heard said song lots of times (natch), I’d never before noticed how preposterous the words were. Julie Andrews chirps that, inter alia, her favourite things are “door bells and sleigh bells and schnitzel with noodles”. Schnitzel with noodles is right up there with chicken tikka lasagne as fusion food I don’t wish to try. Said song progresses to say “When the dog bites, when the bee stings, when I’m feeling saaaaaad, I simply remember my favourite things and then I don’t feeeeeel…. so bad!”

Now call me excessively literal and insufficiently romantic, but if a German Shepherd had just angrily taken a lump out of my leg, I really can’t imagine that picturing a doorbell in my mind would have any palliative effect.

I apologise for having put Sound of Music songs in your head. They’ll be there all day. Blame me if you sing them out loud.

Random catch up

New prime minister. Well yes, what is there to say that isn’t already being said? I reckon that Gordon Brown would be well advised to call an election very soon, in order to give him legitimacy. The economy could go tits up soon and if it does he has very little chance of winning the office. Somehow though, I don’t really care.

Bomb attacks. Am I the only person who isn’t horrified by the attempted bombings recently? My thoughts are more of relief. If the best that they can do is some bungled and amateur attempts like driving a car into an airport terminal, I am much reassured.

Bikes. Mundane as it may be as a topic for a blog, I have recently rediscovered my love of bikes. I had my bike serviced for the princely sum of £50, including several new parts. Bikes are great and blokes who work in bike shops are always lovely. I wish to marry one. To the right is a picture of my lovely Trek 950 bike in my hallway. This bike is a thing of real beauty to me and gives me more pleasure than I think owning a flash car would. Certainly per £ invested, it’s a mightily good return in terms of health and pleasure.

The Dutch. I took a week’s holiday to Spain last week, flying somewhat oddly with KLM. For somebody who’s travelled so much, it’s somewhat astounding that I’ve never been to the Netherlands. I really ought to as there’s something really likeable about the Dutch. They may be somewhat too fond of church and caravans for my true comfort, but they always seem so practical, businesslike and yet without any prissiness that I feel I’d love a weekend in Amsterdam. Anybody fancy going?

Spain. Yup, another year and another week in Sitges. That’s a bit of a gay cliché, but it’s such a great town. I also find holidays a great place to meet people, indeed about the only place I really meet people properly. I didn’t go there last year. I was a fool.

Running. Upon my return from Spain, where I’d drunk rather a lot and got into the habit where bed at 4am was an early night, I ran the London 10k run with a very good friend of mine. We did the 10k in Manchester a couple of months ago. Manchester was a lot of fun, but every step of the London one was painful. I’m still somewhat surprised that I finished it, let alone finished it with a reduced time from last time. It was grim though. Perhaps getting 4 hours’ sleep after a week of alcoholic toxic shock and no exercise beyond getting “jacked up on some cheap champagne” isn’t the best means of preparation for endurance events?