Monday 29 March 2010

Loss

I didn't know it was British Summertime this weekend until I read it in the paper on Saturday. It always takes me by surprise and is usually accompanied by the 3 seconds of thinking "is it the good one? The one where we get an extra hour in bed?" followed by the realisation that, no, it's the one that robs us of an hour from the weekend. It's effectively a tax on summer.

My mate Rusty had a great idea this weekend. It seems we've all been forced to give up this hour at the weekend, in our own time so why don't we just move it. Instead of losing an hour on Sunday morning, we should just all take the hour forward at about 3pm on the Friday. Imagine that. One minute it's 2.59pm, the next it's 4pm and just about the weekend.

It would probably cost the economy £10bn or something, but surely it would be worth it just for that extra hour. Plus it would really screw people's heads on a Friday afternoon and probably make Outlook's Calendar explode.

I should point out now, this idea may have been fuelled by a lot of booze, so may not have been properly thought through. Other ideas that have been come up with in the same way include - cars made of foam rubber that means people never die in car accidents, humans evolving their hands into remote controls for TVs and/or their fingers as cutley and the idea that if everyone had to wear hats, it would solve virtually all the problems in the world. If you'd like to know more about these then please consume 8 units of alcohol first and meet me by the quiz machine.

The final part of this story was that I did get the benefit of the extra hour in the end The missus updated her phone, putting it on an hour herself, but the phone clearly also did it itself at some point. So when her phone alarm went off at 7.30am it was actually 6.30am. Take that BST.

Monday 22 March 2010

Keeping up with the I-joneses

I love my tech. Heck, I still love ceefax (tesco value internet I call it). But new tech, like the phone I am blogging on now, tickles me like I'm Elmo (sesame street, not Brush Strokes). I love the fact I can write this nonsense whilst sitting in a hotel foyer where, I'm pretty sure, the England ladies football team are currently meeting.

My tech allows me to can check film times in Truro (amazing eh - a cinema in Cornwall) or get a recipe suggestion just by putting in the ingredients (ham, cheese, bread - ah, coq au vin). So I should be all very happy shouldn't I thankyouvermuch.

Except all these whizzbang things need taking care of. My iphone is also my ipod and has the facility to show the album cover of the music you are listening to. But my image library was sparse, so the nice little disply was full of blanks.

So I manually added the covers. I started at 10.30pm on Saturday night and by 1.45am Sunday morning had to give up. Partly because I had run out of beer to keep me going but mainly because my eyes felt like they'd had salted peanuts rubbed in them.

I finally finished my album cover odyssey at some point on Sunday afternoon and was able to happily flick through the entire collection in a nice OCD manner for some time. That was after I bought a new protective cover for the phone. Oh, and for the screen. And sorted the charger. And arranged the wi-fi. By which point it was next thursday.

Honestly, it's like having a child. Only you can put them in the drawer and forget about them if you want to, but without social services getting involved. Oh and they have built-in GPS - the tech, not the children. Saying that perhaps that's the next thing wifi-gps-4g kids. Start queuing for them now.

Friday 12 March 2010

Sex and violins

Because i'm an evil planet destroying type I drive a car. Actually, I mainly do it because it's handy, easy and relatively inexpensive. The planet destruction is just an added bonus.

This week though I've been back to various forms of public transport. Car in for MOT meant the bus yesterday, and on wednesday a meeting was easier to get to on the train rather than drive.

As a student, and a man with very little money, I used to live on public transport. I knew bus numbers, I recognised fellow passengers and I never stood forward of 'this line' or distracted the driver. And it was fun at times. Mainly beacause of the things that you observe. Here's my top 5 "lack of my own car" moments

5.I fell asleep regularly on my commute from Torquay to Exeter on the train. One morning I fell asleep 2 minutes into the 40 minute journey and woke up as the train was pulling into the right station. Well, I woke up. My left leg didnt. I'd been sitting funny and it was completely numb and asleep. I managed to limp at high speed to the train door where I then foolishly led with said leg. I fell straight out onto the platform where I had to be helped up by people who clearly thought I had a serious motor condition.

4.Getting on a bus in Nottingham with my chum Daive who said to the grumpy bus driver. "Are you going to the city centre". "Yes". "Can we come with you?". Putting it that way seemed so much nicer.

3.A violin once dropped out of the overhead rack on a train and hit me full on the head. No more explanation needed really.

2.I've mentioned this before, but I nearly got arrested at Birmingham New Street as a student. I dropped a bag that had the processed ham from M&S that was the staple part of my diet at Uni. Sadly the bag fell onto the tracks under the stopped train. So I lay down on the floor to reach under the train to get my bag. Within 10 seconds I was being hauled up by British Transport Police who were convinced I was trying to kill myself. Thank the lord this was the early 90's - these days I'd be in a terrorist prison. The Ham bomber they'd have called me. Porksploder. Or something.

1. This is utterly true, and whilst it's not strictly public transport it's worth telling. Again in Nottingham, me and 4 friends were waiting for a bus on a saturday night. A people carrier/taxi pulled up and asked us if we wanted to go into town. It was a big new people carrier and it wouldn't cost much so we agreed. Inside it was filled with TV screens and 30 seconds into the journey the driver said "You chaps will like this", pressed a button and the screens switched on displaying 8 women indulding in hardcore pornography with a whole manner of household objects. The longest 10 minutes of our lives, each of us sitting in the 'porn taxi' open mouthed wondering quite why this taxi driver thought we'd enjoy it. Sometimes I struggle to believe it really happened. "You chaps will like this"? If we were sex offenders, perhaps.