Every man would love to have a volleyball as a friend

Today marks the last day I will be sitting at this desk at work, the desk from which I've written most of this rubbish. I've been sat here since December 1998 (not all the time, I do go home in the evening and at weekends), and clearing out my drawer (and all the other cupboards I've filled with my rubbish) has revealed that I may be a magpie.
I've found about twenty copies of NME and Melody Maker, dating back to 1999. I'll keep the copies of Melody Maker as it was the superior of the music weeklies, and these copies will be worth whole pence in fifty years time. Especially the SEX issue, which reveals what turns Danny McNamara on. I've filled up a whole recycle paper bin with old courses, doodle sheets and business plans.
I'm moving six desks along, where I'll be sat at Neil Pike's old desk. Neil was the colleague of mine who was tragically killed on New Year's Eve 2003 in South Africa. It'll be weird for a day or two to be sat at that desk, and I've already had the rather morbid thought of how freaky it'll be to breath in some of his remnants from the dust on the desk. I can be a bit odd sometimes; I'm sure most people don't think like that.
This desk move has coincided with the return to work of the boss, after a couple of months absence with a mysterious virus.
Great.
I'll have to wait and see what the score is but there may be little blogging from next week. The problem I have is that the new seating plans sees me sat right next to the guy. Ballsacks!
The big boss chap is also moving up here. He is, to quote William Shakespeare, a "fucking cunt". We've only ever exchanged words once, and that was enough for me. He complained that I didn't work enough hours.
The baldy carrot-crunching twat.
As he has a reputation of running a strict ship, we can see a lot of change around here. Pub trips will have to be kept to a minimum (we're going every day this week to make up for it), and he'll probably notice that I take rather long lunchtimes. It's going to be an ever-increasing bundle of fucking joy working here, I'll tell thee.

The Tears album is really good, it sounds like early Suede with shedloads of strings added on top. I am most enjoying it. However, the lyrics of Brett Anderson often make you wince.
Here are some examples of the nonsense he comes up with…

"Europe has moving statelines but Africa has winter sunshine"

"We'll go where the crowds don't stare and no one hates us for our hair"

"I want your language to be appalling, I want to play with your hair in the morning"

I could go on, yet there is one song that sticks out. The song 'Apollo 13' is a nice little number, but contains the following …

"Like Apollo, like Apollo we'll fly to the moon
Yes if you follow me I will follow you into the unknown
Like Apollo, like Apollo 13 we'll explode
Yes if you follow me I will follow you into the unknown
Oh like Apollo, like Apollo we'll sink like a stone"

Now, there are some factual errors there, and I feel that some fans of the band will come to have the wrong idea about the ill-fated journey of Apollo 13 into space.
Apollo 13 did fly to the moon, so that is correct, even though it didn't land there. Actually, Brett doesn't say 'Apollo 13' there, he says 'Apollo'. I'm guessing he still means Apollo 13, because it is after all the name of the song. Otherwise, the song should be called 'Apollo 13, but containing references to the other Apollo missions launched by the American space agency'. Not catchy, but more descriptive.
Anyway, the thing that caught my attention was the statement about Apollo 13 exploding. You see, I've seen Tom Hanks, Bill Paxton and Kevin Bacon in films made later, so it can't have exploded. How could Tom Hanks have been stranded for 4 years with Wilson the volleyball if he had exploded in Apollo 13? I guess he also wouldn't have been able to travel back in time to 1944 to die in World War 2 either, if he'd sunk like a stone. Another lie.
So come on Brett, do some research into what you report as fact from now on.
I may write to him.

We've got a new health & safety inspector in our building. It is quite possibly the worst person it could be, a jobsworth middle-aged woman whose previous role seemed to consist in nagging people about the state of their office, refusing to allow non-execs to book hire cars and meeting rooms, and generally abusing her role as head of the building.
Well, it's nice to see the new role hasn't gone to her head. She's banned us from using the microwaves as she thinks there is bare metal showing in them. Nobody else has seen any problems, but her health & safety handbook must insist that the microwave be sealed off, in case it comes alive and kills us all.
Our building has three floors, with a big atrium in the middle. The stairs between the ground floor and the first floor are an exposed set of metal stairs. The stairs between the first floor and my top floor are a spiral metal deathtrap, which has really low banisters. Still, I've been in here for 6 years now and haven't yet toppled drunkenly over the railing.
Our new inspector has decreed that the railings are too low and that they present a hazard. Only, she hasn't shut off the spiral-of-death, no, instead she has cordoned off the lower set of stairs. So, we have to use the creaking lift of doom, or the emergency staircase, which also has rather low railings.
I predict a fire with everyone burning to death, as our health and safety officer stands outside protesting that she only caused everyone to die so they could be safe.
Then again, this is the lady that made Chris and I take down our tower of coke cans as they represented "a fire hazard".
The resistance has started already, somebody has written something sweary on the notice not to use the microwave. I'm looking forward to when she comes to empty our recycled can bin, as the cardboard bottom of the box has been destroyed by the little bits at the bottom of the cans dripping out and making it a soggy mess.
Sadly, every attack on the authorities will result in a dozen innocents being taken outside and shot in the car park.

I have to go to a wedding on Friday, a mammoth trip to Colchester for the wedding of my 3rd cousin. I don't really want to, but it makes my mum happy that we turn up for family things, even though they are the furthest related family from me that I can think of. I don't even know all of my Aberdonian first cousins, but I'll make the trip across the country for this. Sheesh.
We went to my other 3rd cousin's wedding a couple of years ago, again in Colchester.
The wedding a couple of years ago was possibly the poshest (and dearest) thing I've ever been to. Maybe I wrote something in the blog about it, I can't remember.

Tortoise 76

I dreamt a joke last night. Well, it was more of an "amusing" statement than a joke with a punchline. It isn't funny at all, but I'm intrigued that my subconscious was attempting to be funny. And failed.
In the dream, I was in a swimming pool with a few people that I know. For some reason I said the following…
'I feel really sorry for female spiders, imagine how much they'd have to spend on mascara.'
Nobody laughed in the dream either, though I was the one laughing as I found I could do lengths of the swimming pool in approximately five seconds. The reason for this was that nobody had noticed that my lane was about a tenth the length of theirs, so I used this to clock up some amazing times.
I am the best!
Swimming has turned up in my dreams as the gym we have joined has a 25m pool. I am possibly the worst swimmer in the world, and it's kind of embarrassing when being overtaken by six year old kids. There are people in the pool who can effortlessly swim length after length. I put way too much effort in and end up almost collapsing at the end of a length. One day I shall join Jeremy from Grange Hill in fictional heaven.
Running seems to be more of my piano-forte. I'm running 4K in 20 minutes, which isn't bad for somebody who hasn't done any serious exercise in years. I think there is a good chance that I could be winning the London marathon within two years. I wouldn't stop halfway through to do a big poo either.
One thing that is slightly freaking me out is the way in which people get changed at the gym. Well, I say people, but my only experience is of men getting changed. I have not been spying on the ladies changing room, and it was merely coincidence that I chose the machine next to the ladies changing room to do my exercises. And anyway, I'm sure the court will agree that ALL parts of the body need to be exercised thoroughly, and I was acting in a proper way.
Anyway, I digress.
People are way too comfortable with their nakedness. It's okay to be naked at a gym when you're getting changed and/or showering, but some people wander around aimlessly with everything on show. Look, get fucking changed, and stop standing around drying your knackers for five minutes. I'm sure they weren't that fucking wet, so stop fondling yourself whilst chatting to your muscle-buddy about the excellent bench presses you've done.
Actually, far more alarming is when parents bring their kids into the changing rooms with them. I'm not objecting to young lads in the changing rooms, but dads will happily bring their young daughters into the gents and let them wander around and mingle with the chronic nad-dryers. Is this wrong or am I being a prude? At what age does it become wrong for a boy or girl to be in the wrong changing room? Does anybody else feel uncomfortable with young girls waiting for their naked father outside a shower cubicle filled with naked men?
Is this going on in the ladies changing room? Are young lads who are too young to go into the men's changing room on their own, subjected to the sight of loads of wobblies, and roughly half as many lady-mittens? Are they going to grow up okay?
It bothers me.

Town was a bit odd today. I went to town as today sees the release of several quality albums; The White Stripes, The Tears and Joy Zipper have new CDs out. Hmm, the inlays smell so nice. Early favourite is The Tears which sounds aces. Tonight we're going to party like it's 1993!
On my way back to the car, I saw a man running up the street towards me. He was a man in his forties, wearing a salmon-pink shirt, comfortable trousers and sensible shoes. He had a fairly big beard and a carrier bag under one arm. He was running in the oddest way possible, an uncoordinated movement of arms, legs and swinging plastic bag. He looked like he'd never run before, and had only now just discovered the joys of it. At full pelt, he tore around the corner and headed towards Ladywell Street. I turned from watching him to see that a woman in full running gear (shorts, crappy sports shirt and big clunky stopwatch) running behind him. She had big bottle-top glasses on and seemed to be about 4ft tall. Following the man, she ran around the corner and continued after him.
What was going on there? Were they friends who had gone running together? If so, did he think that it was a great idea to be running the streets of Preston dressed as a Geography teacher?
Or, had he just stolen a jumper from Burtons, and was now trying to escape the worlds smallest and least appropriate security guard?
Or had Zola Budd murdered somebody, been sent to prison, fallen in love with fellow convict Peter Sutcliffe and then planned a daring and quite brilliant escape whilst on day-release in Preston? You know, I hear that multi-murderers get shopping trips in Preston nowadays.
Anyway, it was a bizarre sight. Then, just to finish it off, Gaz Liter walked past me obviously pissed-up. He didn't look well.
Maybe my Subway sandwich had been spiked.

Over the weekend, we were in the middle-lands. We got drunk on Saturday night. It was fun, though I guess that sometimes it's a bad thing that booze is a mood-enhancer. I had a nice time though, even allowing for the utter charmer of a taxi-driver that took us back to Julia's house.
We also saw The League Of Gentlemen Apocalypse, which I thought was pretty good. It certainly made me laugh at several scenes, mainly due the fact that it was so utterly silly. Silly things make me smile. Some critics have called if self-indulgent, but seem to have missed the point. The cast know they've made something daft and random, and openly seem keen to laugh at themselves. It's not a big ego-trip, if it was then they wouldn't be so keen to make themselves look bad.

Joy Zipper are turning my ears on at the moment…and that's the thought I'm leaving you with.
Ciao!