I should have been blogging all through this month - I've had the time but not the inclination. Perhaps a line or two on the specifics will be sufficient?
Kites: Got a DP Pwer 3.5 metre quad line traction kite and she's lush. Ozone budget range, to all intents and purposes with the build quality that marque (or absence thereof) provides. I've barely had opportunity to fly it though, the week before it arrived I went to Porthcawl with Lee and we nearly lost his 6 metre slingshot over the lifeboathouse - a quick rooftop adventure saved the day though and we discovered Rush kites down the road, so I'll be stopping in there for some stakes and pads as I've now got a Scrub landboard and such so I need the safety gear. Go here though, if you are buying anything kitey - they are brilliant. Secnod time out was to Barry Island - need an empty day as Sunday morning there are people out there with no grasp of physics who seem to think a 3.5 kite travelling horizontally in a force 4 won't cause brain damage on impact, nor will lines cut you to the bone. I ended up having a strop and shouting at Mars and she made us go home.
Games: Got a new Goodmans flat tube telly for the consoles (plasma and HD and all that won't do for my lovely interlaced PAL retro consoles) and played through Half Life 2 and Riddick on the OxBox whilst waiting to start a job.
Work: All agancies will lie sufficiently to get you to take whatever position they are trying to fill. I am an underwriter for another bank at present, and both they and the agency have lied through their teeth, not to mention the training that couldn't have been less well planned had the Italian armed forces been in charge.
Flat: We're getting there. It does feel like home though. Then again, everywhere does to me, to a point.
Town: Cardiff is rather nice. Certainly within acceptable parameters. Can't wait until I've got some money to enjoy it. Plus the media keeps throwing me little glamorous snippets of Manchester. The new Oasis video to 'The Masterplan' with the band and modern day Mancunia shown in LS Lowryvision almost brought a nostalgic tear to my eye the other day. Almost.
Her Indoors: Give her a jangly belt, a bread making machine and a prosperous and dynamic career progression and she's as happy as a pig in the proverbial. We are both in love with the same local pub, which has helped settling in a lot.
People: Not many yet - one evening's drinking with a rather sound chap off the internet forums I frequent and a couple of mate from up in the valleys so far - not had the cash to make friends. Can't fault Cardiff's taste in women though - sooner or later I'll get run over whilst gawping.
Money: I've forgotten what that is.
Forest: Top of the league and being sued by David Platt. Not sure which is making me smile more. I hope Doughty spends a couple of his millions bankrupting the deluded shagwit with legal fees by drawing the proceedings out over half a decade and contersueing for the millions he spent on his italian mates who played about a game each.
There, I've caught up now.
Sunday, October 29, 2006
Wednesday, October 04, 2006
Moving house, then...
Further to my previous entry, let me elaborate on what's been going on (and stuff).
In my final week at work, the idiot girl didnt turn up, having been given a job at her agency, by her agency in order to save them having to process her expenses, an endeavour which might have taken them 20 minutes a week were they not hopelessly inept and so annoyed at having to do it in the first place that they never bothered to learn how it works properly. They are very welcome to her however, and had they waited 5 more days their problem would have sorted itself out. I cherish the knowledge that even now she is sitting there texting the day away, spouting dogmatic rhetoric and going on about all the sex she does with her landlord, who is clearly making the best of an annoying tenant. She's effectively paying him to live there twice, and she stays out of the way when his missus come up from London to stay. Of course, if anyone reading this knows Laura in London who is going out with Chris the psychologist from Hull, a word in her ear might be fun. She might have been making it all up but seeing the state of her the mornings after the much-discussed (if her going on about it in an unprovoked and incessant manner could be called discussion) fornication I am fairly certain this was one thing she wasn't constantly lying about.
So there was me and the Ulsterman for Monday and Tuesday then I was off to York to train up three other fellows to do that branch. Our man in Leeds did a sterling job on the last three days in which he was by himself, the essentials were completed and he's back at uni now, only a little clearing to do into confidential waste and the York crew can commute for a day to handle that. My job was done Friday evening, York had been lovely for three days and I stopped off in a little pub that sells Black Sheep beers on the way to the station to escape the rain and wait out the hour until my train. Back in Hull, Neal and I went to the Queens (no beer due to flooding) then Zest (too hot to think) and then the Adelphi (which was so damp I assume it had been dipped in the Humber that afternoon). In the end we went to the special pub and a special night was had by all. I think we got pizza on the way home, but frankly I remember very little past about ten.
That job over, Mars returned the next day and we set about packing. Now, the thing with the move was this. Mars wanted 'man with a van' to move us, as he'd done an office for her previously and made a good go of it, so he was due to call me and come round to suss the van he needed to hire for the job. Weeks had passed with no contact (he had my numbers) so we arranged for him to come wednesday night. I was a bit suspicious at this point, mainly because I am a snob and he was a prole, but having set a jolly bad example by leaving work early on Wednesday (at cost to myself) I arrived back in good time and called him advising he could come round earlier than the agreed seven to eight if it suited him. Apparently he was tied up with another job. Now, I'd have said that the other job could wait, but not wanting to rock the boat we rescheduled for the next night. I got home early again, because if I had left at the end of the working day the next train would have brought me home only just on time and with delays every single day one way or another for the last three months, I didn't trust the trains and didn't want to inconvenience him. I waited in. No visit. In the end I called Mars and advised her to ring him as I couldn't be held responsible for my language if he trotted out some crap excuse for his tardiness. He'd 'Forgotten' apparently, and agreed to come round on Saturday morning at nine.
Friday being my big night out, I decoded upon an eight thirty wake-up and proceeded to do so, noting I had a missed callfrom eight o'clock from muggins saying he was coming round at eight thirty. Out of bed I got and the door went. He was inside for all of 2 minutes before asking the magic question "Cardiff - that's in Wales isn't it? In the North East of Wales, isn't it?". He was expecting a two-hour run out there, and potentially confusing it with Liverpool. To cut a long story medium, I said Mars would phone him but agreed a price and said to go ahead with anything he needed to get sorted. He reckoned a 3.5 tonne luton would do the trick. Wednesday comes, we are almost packed and I awake to a very early voicemail from him asking if we still wanted to go ahead with the move. Well bloody obviously. We called him and he said he'd go ahead and book the van then. My head was a peal of alarm bells. You don't just book a van the day before you need it. There simply aren't that many about. One or two hours later we got the inevitable call saying he couldn't get the van he needed and would 'try to sort something out'. It was at this point I called Billy down in Lincoln and put him on standby to get a van and do the move for us instead....
By the end of that day, Billy had the van organised and the other guy had phoned back mid afternoon (effectively giving us about 16 hour's notice) and said he wasn't going to move us. We packed some more and went to bed. Thursday morning Billy arrived in a pimped-out long wheel base high top panel van and and we crammed an astonishing amount in there. Myself and Billy set off in said van for Cardiff, arriving mid afternoon. Mars and Neal followed in her car with another load of stuff. One swift unpacking later, we all jumped back in the van apart from Mars who jumped (or, more accurately, seeped) into bed. Numerous diversions later, the three of us arrived in Lincoln, where after a brief bacon and sausage sandwhich break Billy left for home as Ma and Pa ferried Neal and I back up to Hull. This was all about one in the morning on the Friday.
Friday daytime Neal picked up another van and we waited out a storm before taking all his stuff round to the house so he could move in. That was a hell of a day and we retired to the pub afterwards to numb the pain. Then the curry happened. Oh! sweet, nourishing curry, how beautiful thou art. Mars had a lovely million-hour trip back up to Hull herself and on the Saturday the two of us left Neal up in Hull with his new house and took a final car load back to Cardiff. By midnight I was in my new home and full of Chinese food.
And that's the story of my house move. It was crap. If I missed a bit, leave a comment.
In my final week at work, the idiot girl didnt turn up, having been given a job at her agency, by her agency in order to save them having to process her expenses, an endeavour which might have taken them 20 minutes a week were they not hopelessly inept and so annoyed at having to do it in the first place that they never bothered to learn how it works properly. They are very welcome to her however, and had they waited 5 more days their problem would have sorted itself out. I cherish the knowledge that even now she is sitting there texting the day away, spouting dogmatic rhetoric and going on about all the sex she does with her landlord, who is clearly making the best of an annoying tenant. She's effectively paying him to live there twice, and she stays out of the way when his missus come up from London to stay. Of course, if anyone reading this knows Laura in London who is going out with Chris the psychologist from Hull, a word in her ear might be fun. She might have been making it all up but seeing the state of her the mornings after the much-discussed (if her going on about it in an unprovoked and incessant manner could be called discussion) fornication I am fairly certain this was one thing she wasn't constantly lying about.
So there was me and the Ulsterman for Monday and Tuesday then I was off to York to train up three other fellows to do that branch. Our man in Leeds did a sterling job on the last three days in which he was by himself, the essentials were completed and he's back at uni now, only a little clearing to do into confidential waste and the York crew can commute for a day to handle that. My job was done Friday evening, York had been lovely for three days and I stopped off in a little pub that sells Black Sheep beers on the way to the station to escape the rain and wait out the hour until my train. Back in Hull, Neal and I went to the Queens (no beer due to flooding) then Zest (too hot to think) and then the Adelphi (which was so damp I assume it had been dipped in the Humber that afternoon). In the end we went to the special pub and a special night was had by all. I think we got pizza on the way home, but frankly I remember very little past about ten.
That job over, Mars returned the next day and we set about packing. Now, the thing with the move was this. Mars wanted 'man with a van' to move us, as he'd done an office for her previously and made a good go of it, so he was due to call me and come round to suss the van he needed to hire for the job. Weeks had passed with no contact (he had my numbers) so we arranged for him to come wednesday night. I was a bit suspicious at this point, mainly because I am a snob and he was a prole, but having set a jolly bad example by leaving work early on Wednesday (at cost to myself) I arrived back in good time and called him advising he could come round earlier than the agreed seven to eight if it suited him. Apparently he was tied up with another job. Now, I'd have said that the other job could wait, but not wanting to rock the boat we rescheduled for the next night. I got home early again, because if I had left at the end of the working day the next train would have brought me home only just on time and with delays every single day one way or another for the last three months, I didn't trust the trains and didn't want to inconvenience him. I waited in. No visit. In the end I called Mars and advised her to ring him as I couldn't be held responsible for my language if he trotted out some crap excuse for his tardiness. He'd 'Forgotten' apparently, and agreed to come round on Saturday morning at nine.
Friday being my big night out, I decoded upon an eight thirty wake-up and proceeded to do so, noting I had a missed callfrom eight o'clock from muggins saying he was coming round at eight thirty. Out of bed I got and the door went. He was inside for all of 2 minutes before asking the magic question "Cardiff - that's in Wales isn't it? In the North East of Wales, isn't it?". He was expecting a two-hour run out there, and potentially confusing it with Liverpool. To cut a long story medium, I said Mars would phone him but agreed a price and said to go ahead with anything he needed to get sorted. He reckoned a 3.5 tonne luton would do the trick. Wednesday comes, we are almost packed and I awake to a very early voicemail from him asking if we still wanted to go ahead with the move. Well bloody obviously. We called him and he said he'd go ahead and book the van then. My head was a peal of alarm bells. You don't just book a van the day before you need it. There simply aren't that many about. One or two hours later we got the inevitable call saying he couldn't get the van he needed and would 'try to sort something out'. It was at this point I called Billy down in Lincoln and put him on standby to get a van and do the move for us instead....
By the end of that day, Billy had the van organised and the other guy had phoned back mid afternoon (effectively giving us about 16 hour's notice) and said he wasn't going to move us. We packed some more and went to bed. Thursday morning Billy arrived in a pimped-out long wheel base high top panel van and and we crammed an astonishing amount in there. Myself and Billy set off in said van for Cardiff, arriving mid afternoon. Mars and Neal followed in her car with another load of stuff. One swift unpacking later, we all jumped back in the van apart from Mars who jumped (or, more accurately, seeped) into bed. Numerous diversions later, the three of us arrived in Lincoln, where after a brief bacon and sausage sandwhich break Billy left for home as Ma and Pa ferried Neal and I back up to Hull. This was all about one in the morning on the Friday.
Friday daytime Neal picked up another van and we waited out a storm before taking all his stuff round to the house so he could move in. That was a hell of a day and we retired to the pub afterwards to numb the pain. Then the curry happened. Oh! sweet, nourishing curry, how beautiful thou art. Mars had a lovely million-hour trip back up to Hull herself and on the Saturday the two of us left Neal up in Hull with his new house and took a final car load back to Cardiff. By midnight I was in my new home and full of Chinese food.
And that's the story of my house move. It was crap. If I missed a bit, leave a comment.
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