More, as they say, than nothing.

The weekend rolls around again, and through the virtue of the government and traditions of our feisty little nation, it is a Bank Holiday weekend.

Which means the weather is a little out of synch with the calendar, because the flash flooding and freak rain levels were earlier this week.
Odd.

My plans stand thusly:

Friday Afternoon

1. Leave for Southampton
2. Arrive at Southampton Airport Parkway
3. Weigh up, seeing as it is payday and I have my passport on me, the possibility of hopping on a flight to Amsterdam, there to pick up the comparatively cheap Netherlands-US express
4. Stop it and cross over to the other platform, there to meet a hamster of a green tint, who will by this time be looking across the tracks at me strangely for standing and staring at a collection of airport buildings for ten minutes
5. Do stuff
6. Sleep

Saturday

1. Awaken halfway to Doncaster, borne aloft on my mattress by greenhamster's resident ant population, being taken back to the subterranean lair of the Ant Queen as the centrepiece for her world famous Human Sacrifice Masquerade Ball, which is always held on the first Saturday night of May
2. Wake up
3. Do morningy stuff, go to the ferries, cross to the Isle of Wight
4. Greet parentals
5. Do caulkhead stuff; shop, play snooker, potentially meet Sharon, chat.
6. Catch the night bus back to Ventnor, where a black cat with no bell will sneak into the house in the darkness and silently and invisibly accompany me to my bedroom and only make itself known when I wake up in the morning with it's arse in my face. This is not the plan, this is just what happened last time

Sunday

1. More Caulkhead activities. Breakfast of Kings (stuff the champions)
2. Attempt to get the parrot to recognise and accept me after my continued absence from the family home. This is to impress Krissa with my jungle-man animal taming skills when she comes to stay later this month, and to avoid the resultant time-consuming trip to Casualty that is almost certainly on the cards if he doesn't accept and recognise me and I try to turn him upside-down to show off to Krissa
3. Go to chemists to buy antiseptic and plasters
4. Trim nails/claws/talons of parrot
5. Go For A Walk With The Family
6. Sleep

Monday

1. More Breakfast of Kings
2. Mong about
3. Half-heartedly repack
4. Catch ferry/red jet/fastcat to The Mainland
5. Pursue any means necessary on the national public transport system to return to Hatfield; this may include buses, trains, planes, roller blades, submarines and/or walking.

Take the above and sprinkle liberally with telephone calls to the United States, my Dad thinking up even more embarrassing nicknames for me, pointed discussion and devising traps for multitudinous insect life, and you have a reasonable idea of the weekend.

So, wherever you are, and whatever or whosoever you are doing, enjoy the weekend, and steer clear of Doncaster on Saturday.

So we were in the cab of this lorry which had stopped to pick us up on the roundabout just off the top side of campus, past Tesco. The driver seemed okay. He just wanted to be quiet and listen to the radio, which was tuned to Terry Wogan's breakfast show. It was still dark, and the motorway was quite clear.

You know the feeling? That quick-shaking of the ribs that is something between excitement and the cold had susbsided into a cramped and awkward but comfortable warmth from the dashboard heater. Our four or five layers of clothing topped with the blue t-shirts with that bloody stupid collection tin character were making us drowsy, but we were perked on a couple of cups of coffee and the knowledge that after almost an hour of waving our big card signs in the cold, we were on our way to Edinburgh.

The driver swung around a roundabout and coasted down a hill as the sky was paling, but on the ground the morning was still a deep and greyish blue. Terry was doing some kind of Eastenders spoof sketch, but I don't watch soaps at all if I have a choice - you know - don't you find soaps painful? Anyway, I didn't know what was going on in Eastenders so I didn't get most of the jokes, but it sounded fun. I needed to take off one of my jumpers, as I was getting really hot, but the driver had said he wouldn't be able to take us far, so I thought it would be better to wait and not try it, which would probably involve elbowing both him and my partner repeatedly, the crashing of the truck, and a flaming death. So I just sat there and watched the road go by.

A reedy brass intro followed the end of the sketch, and the sun came up as the truck sped around a long looping stretch of elevated motorway and we could see the light of the morning yellowing and warming the colours across the scape of Birmingham and the piano came in underneath and it was one of those moments, you know the kind? When you're doing something, or travelling, and you're happy to just...be.

Ever see a blind man cross the road,
Trying to make the other side?

It was a familiar tune, in a sort of I-think-my-Dad-used-to-play-this-in-the-car kind of way, but it was the first time I heard the Stereophonics version, and it was on the radio again this morning.

I make no issue of it, nor anything else; I'm having a bad day today.

I very nearly got myself killed this morning, which in any case generally tends to put a sense of my own mortality into a day... which, when combined with the kind of day that doesn't come along very often - i.e. bungee jumping, meeting your idol or otherwise doing something to make the day worthwhile, is fair enough.
Otherwise this tint of mortality just rams home the lack of 'carpe diem' in the daily round.
Which is none too cheery.

In another aspect of my life, I am missing my love greatly today.
No matter how I word this, it comes across as an understatement.
Again, it might be because of the boy racer's near hit this morning...it might not.
There is a lot to miss about my love.

In yet another aspect of life, that of fiscal matters, I recently picked up the reins of a long dormant bank account; I have paid a little money into it over the last couple of weeks, money from things other than work - a few quid for some scouting work for a news agency, nothing major. But this is the beginning of using this account for flights, saving and spending for America. This is to be, you might say, The Hope Account.

Well, that was the plan.
I went into the Hatfield branch of this bank (who shall remain nameless until I finish typing Lloyds TSB) and asked, not unreasonably, in my opinion, if I could order a card of some description to use in conjunction with the account. In my mind's eye I could see me ordering flights online...they said no.
I was understandably taken aback.
Apparently, in order to be able to get to the money in any way other than physically going into the bank, proving my identity, writing a request and then standing, waiting while everyone smiles and pretends that this shit is still necessary in this day and age before being formally handed the stuff, it will take approximately six months of 'activity' and 'transactions' on the account.

Which, when they won't give you the money 'til you pry it from their chubby little fingers personally, is bank-speak for, "We want to make sure you're rich enough first."

It pisses me off that they feel the need to have this level of control, when a simple debit card, suitably set up, cannot be used over the amount actually available to spend. It's like they're doing it for the kicks. To keep people down.

I am loathe to set up internet banking because the only net access I have is intermittently through my housemate's PC...

So; I will wait for my meagre little cheques to clear, and then I shall pry that money from their chubby little fingers. And bury it in a box, ten feet under the ground, at the bottom of my garden.

For ease of access, you understand.

I nearly got run over this morning.

On the plus side, I feel very awake and alert - as though I actually drank the cup of coffee I didn't have because I was running late.

So I have been comprehensively woken up, all without the need to resort to pouring chemicals into myself.

The shakes are worse.

I'm not going to try and get run over every day.

Today's post is dedicated to the memory of three rats who managed, in their unwitting and rather terminal electrocution, to cause untold traffic delays and much snigger-behind-the-hand hilarity in my office yesterday.

I rediscovered one of my favourite albums over the weekend, and I don't just mean 'I listened to it again'.

I found it. It was hiding behind a track listing, pretending to be another album by the same band, in one of my CD wallets, and I thought it had been stolen. Or at least, found and not handed in, which, when you're a taxi driver and the stuff is in your taxi, is nearly the same thing.

I refer you to the end of this post, where the words 'drinking will definitely be indulged in' make an appearance.

That was just over a year ago now. It was the night I celebrated getting this job with some of my friends from university. During that evening at Onanon, I spent God's own amount of money, mostly through the utterance of a few key phrases:

"Champagne for everyone!"

"Oooh! A girl selling tequila! Let's have some tequila as well!"

...and then, unbeknownst to me in my heavily inebriated state until the next morning, when I discovered the CDs in my coat pocket;

"I would like to buy these Beatles albums and this Booker T and the MGs CD please."

Damn the HMV in The Trocadero for after-11pm opening hours.

The arrival of these new CDs was vaguely karmic, as I realised almost as soon as I got back, that my bag had gone.
My Radio 1 Record bag; cheap and cheerful to begin with, and then used for about four times as long as it should have been -'loved' was not the word - 'tatty' and 'knackered' were closer to the word - it was resting on the floor of the taxi I had taken to Greenwich, and along with my wallet, and my dictaphone packed notes for the book...it had some CDs in.

And so, in the fullness of time, it dawned on me that I had lost one of my favourite albums with that bag.

But this weekend, putting together a massive bundle of music for Krissa, I found Liquid Skin by Gomez lurking, pretending to be Abandoned Shopping Trolley Hotline.

Naughty CD.

I had forgotten how kickass Rhythm and Blues Alibi is.

The other reason that this comes to mind now is that for some reason, greenhamster seems to think that the best way for me to try to blag my way into anything, anywhere, is to pretend to be a member of Gomez. Should I ever try, this is. I have only done this sort of thing, once, and successfully, in the Ministry Bar in Birmingham in 1999, when I gained access to the VIP area by pretending to be a member of one-hit-wonder group 'Gay Dad'.

Why he imagines me to be a 'Gomezzy kinda guy' is beyond me, but after listening to Liquid Skin non-stop over the weekend, I am in the mood to give it a go on Friday night, when, on my way back to the Island, Senor Greenhamster and I will be going along to see Kosheen in Portsmouth.

Should anything need blagging, of course.
Unnecessary blagging is just desperation.

Ahem.

(I bet you think that's pretty clever, don't you boy?)

Okay, much as it may be to obfuscate and confuse, it has been a happy day of moving and new beginnings for many.

There has been much shifting and sliding.

Biscuit has a new site and domain, as does Shivery, and My Little Owl.

Go and say hi and coo at the decor!

Also, in one of those little co-incidences that makes life interesting, Doctor Pockless has finally decided to bring his crusty old poetry studies to light in an arena where they can be fully appreciated, on the same day that the, er, 'Mother'* of Dr. Steven Badgett, (Dr. Pockless' earnest yet amiable opponent in the field of poetical interpretation), dropped by this site for the first time.

So there are a lot of new sites to read.

I hope you've already got a cup of tea.

* read 'Creator'

I have fixed my mobile, or at least managed to reassemble it and make it turn on.
The plastic shell was a little warped, so the body of the phone took a little effort to slip back in.

I used a nearby stapler to hammer it in.

So the score now stands at:

Fixed:
1 Fire Alarm
1 Mobile Phone

In Bits:
1 Reputation
1 Stapler

I am going to try the trick with the carpet tile and the pen lid on the reputation, and see what happens.