Twice in one day. First the cast iron hinge pretending to be a mountain bike and now a “whatingodsnameisthat” new printer has been installed in the office. Apparently it’s super efficient drawing little power and using space age technology to save ink and, presumably, lives.

What is less clear from the spec sheet is the size of this planet friendly amalgam of fax, print, email and – from what I can glean – lentil growing. It is bloody enormous – I thought we lived in a world of ever increasing miniturisation where technology stuff is so small, it’s useless for both input and output; but hey who gives a shit, it looks great plonked on the pub bar.

But if you’re going to buck a trend, then give it a damn good bucking i say. We have HAL installed on the 7th floor with it’s eerie fan, frankly terrifying random paper sorting, dangerous whirling noises and a colour instruction screen clearly nicked from NASA. Technically sophisticated it may be but it looks like the bastard union of a filing cabinet and a 1970s photocopier. With a suitcase glued onto the end.

There is know way I’m risking sending any of my documents in the direction of “big mamma” because then I’ve had to go near it.

And it scares me.

Depending on your definition of a ‘proper hill‘. While I accept there are no sky reaching remnants of violent glacial or tectonic plate action, the soft southern Chilts do still offer many dishes of ‘short and steep‘ with a side order of ‘pain and suffering‘

Here’s one of them. Last of five nadgery climbs on a tiring loop and it’s a little monster. Steep enough to inscribe the front of your saddle onto low hanging wedding tackle and long enough to make you wonder if a third lung is a possible body upgrade. 379 vertical feet in 1.1 traction searching miles.

Weight over the front to stop it flipping skywards, hamstrings shortening by the second, shards of flint and rock to whip away hard fought grip, and a false summit hiding behind a steep corner.

Last weekend, I was able to withdraw ‘wrong tyres‘ from the excuse bank, but Sunday with fatter tyres, clever suspension and an insertion of bloody mindedness in lieu of fitness, I dragged myself up there.

Had to have a lie down at the top. And some medical assistance. And a few beers to dull the pain afterwards. Problem is I’d sort of given up ever conquering the summit again but now I’m committed to trying it every time.

Time for some quick deposits in the excuse bank I think.

Blatent Plug: Oh and if you are in the market for some digital mapping with GPS magic, I can recommend tracklogs and not only because it’s run by friends of mine 🙂

Short history of Waddesdon manner. Built in the late 1800s to house Rothchild’s collection of art treasures and wall to ceiling paintings. Typically ostentatious Victorian architecture with turrets, sweeping staircases and buttresses flying all over the place. Huge gardens including an Avery that seems to contain one of every species and a driveway that says “see that HUGE house up ahead, that’s mine that is so I win“. Rothchild’s famous for banking (I think that’s the word) but eventually ran of out proper cash and bequeathed house and grounds to National Trust.

Who now make about as much money as the Rothchild’s charging people for entry, food, drinks and – possibly – breathing. It’s staffed by a set of crusty volunteers seemingly each missing a limb or a portion of their cerebral marbles. On the plus side, from its lofty position atop a small Chiltern Hillock, you get a fantastic view of the vale without any of Aylesbury in it. But the gardeners must arrive at work in the morning thinking “bloody hell, where do I start“.

There are some purple and yellow flowers in there – I’m really getting the hang of this horticultural stuff.

Here’s some other grumpy perennials; the Verbalus Sulkiness known for lurking behind other plants in a “life isn’t fair” kind of manner. And Randomus Notheethus, a somewhat sprightlier flower although you’re never quite sure where to find it.

The freeride frisbee of the four winds was given a good outing. Occasionally it came to hand, but mostly, it could be seen veering off at a potentially painful angle to innocent picknickers at any tangential point off the perpendicular. The safest place was to stand right in front of the thrower.

And since Marie Antionette is represented in the house with some furniture that the kids thought “looked rubbish and all worn and stuff“, we had to have a “let them eat cake” moment.

All this is only five miles from our house. About half that if I drive down the bridleway at the end of the road and cheat my way through a couple of electronic gates. And since we’ve now stumped up for some middle-aged, middle-england NT membership, we’ll be back.

I used to think that “easy targets” were just cyclists and pedestrians when being pitted against the might of the motor car. But now, in a downright populist chasing move, I’m going to lampoon the state of the UK road system while offering absolutely no solutions other than everyone cycling. Which down the six lane M25 could be a whole lot of fun.

So my easy target is the road pollution of South East England. And while it is properly shit, it is unfair to label this as the poster child for all of the UK. My experience of the rural byways and backwaters of “proper up north” are rush hours consisting of three cars waiting at a roundabout. That doesn’t include the major cities of course, or the Lake district, or most of the M6 or M1. But I still think I have made a pretty valid point there.

My lack of car usage has now passed into a total apathy around any maintenance such as adding petrol to the tank, cleaning the car (I don’t even know what colour it is anymore) or pumping up the tyres. This last laziness left me with a partial flat and a£90 replacement after failing to notice it was somewhat closer to the ground than it’s fellows, then driving round on it until it exploded.

This morning, I had a ChiltenRailwayEsque journey of over two hours to reach that oh-so distant county that is Surrey. A total of 63 miles including a desperate search for a petrol station and 55 minutes of doing precisely nothing in the World’s biggest car park. The Highways Agency keeps digging it up to add lanes to the wrong side and the car owning population responds by buying another one for their son/daughter/dog/goldfish and we’re back to where we started.

Which is going nowhere very slowly. How could you do that every day? I even left late to miss the traffic but that’s nonsense because the congestion never really stops, it just moves about a bit. Marooned on a six lane motorway with only some interesting ear wax to harvest, it occured to me that short of tarmacing the entire counties of Surrey, Buckinghamshire and Hampshire, there’s no obvious solution other than less people, less cars or less journeys.

They could take the train of course. MWAAAHHHHHHH, go on, I dare you.

Politics and, more specifically, politicians have drawn a suspicious response from me, tapping the rich cynical vein of “anyone who wants to be an MP should automatically be prevented from ever being one“. Groucho Marx? Or Harpo? One of them anyway – unlikely to be Karl.

This evening, a venerable gentleman carrying a clipboard and wearing a tie responded to my wary countenance with this opening gambit “Good evening sir, I’m assuming we can count on your vote?”. Roused from my political lethargy, I spluttered “how the hell could you assume anything of the sort?“.

He was a Conservative of course. This was obvious from his lack of liberal cheese knitting tendencies and, failing to sport that slightly bonkers, partially epileptic doorstep dance that easily identifies the right-on new Labour candidates. I think of them as patronising, pointless and partially mad and refuse to have anything to do with them.

He did try though, bless him. Changing tack, he explained that the local council hadn’t had a Labour member (I sniggered, I know I shouldn’t but I just can’t help myself) since 1473 and the Conservative member (he ploughed on apparently oblivious to my tears of hysteria and recent elbow biting habit) was voted in with a majority of four million last time round.

I countered that voting just encourages them so, rather than “wasting” my chance at representation by tactical voting, I’d tactically not vote at all. His attempt to distance local politicians (merely parish councilors on a power trip) from those wankers in Westminster was met with a spittle flecked riposte that the words untrustworthy bastards had been specifically developed to categorise anyone who has ever felt the urge to address the chair

Random pitched up, clearly pissed off that this old man with his clipboard, badge and worryingly forced smile, had interrupted our game of Spinning Uno and asked why you’d want to send the chair away to some elses house. This seemed an apposite time to gently slam the door in his face leaving him to go and bother my neighbours, most of which had started small fires or left the country to avoid such an interaction.

Me? I think Random may become a politician since my card stack had about doubled while hers had spookily gone the other way. When challenged, she looked me in the eye and promised Dad, I haven’t done anything to them. You do trust me don’t you?

If there’s some loony losing his deposit while standing for some single issue nonsense like the Beer for Breakfast party, he or she will get my vote. Until then, I’ll practice political democracy with Random “ tomorrow she’s going to explain how her sister is responsible for everything bad in the world.

So I’d encourage you to Vote Random and it’ll be jelly for everyone.

Verbal and I were exploring coping strategies to combat the daily mental warfare which eight year old girls seem to prefer to actually doing any school work. While the boys still “ I assume “ duff each other up in the playground before cementing lifelong friendship by stealing a car, the fairer sex are masters at name calling, groupy cliques and the occasional bout of she started it hair pulling.

Right then Verbs I offered up in that peculiar football manager speak when no proper noun is ever allowed more than two syllables (Becks, Wazza, Curbs, Pards, Knobs, whatever) you need to get your retaliation in first, anyone so much as spills your pint, give ˜em the old one-two in the chops and finish ˜em off with a Glasgow kiss and a swift book laden schoolbag to the testicles

This rendered her momentarily speechless which, being such a rarity, forced me to switch tactics. Clearly punching your way through school is all a bit seventies and apparently ˜telling tales‘ is such a sin (this is a CofE school after all) that turning the other buttock (CofE again with a modern twist) is the accepted response if it’s your turn to be picked on.

Drawing on twenty years of corporate experience, I was able to offer proportional retaliations such as ˜writing them an officious email copying in their boss or hunting an individual down with a copy of the last weeks minutes so humiliating them in front of the whole team. In extreme cases, one could consider blanking them in the canteen and weeing in their shoes but it all seemed “ well “ a bit childish.

Eventually we settled on an appropriately verbal parry going something like Don’t mess with Me, Fish Face. It has “ I’m sure you’ll agree “ almost everything in terms of a crushing put down set in a contextual construct of not apparently being bothered and carrying just a hint of violent threat.

I think I may try this at work.

My knob has fallen off. Still fairly sure we were fully populated in the kid schema so nothing to be too alarmed about. Mildly embarrassing in the showers but the English are generally good about ignoring such things or dismissing the subject with a breezy ah knob fallen off eh? Never mind lovely weather we’re having“

Okay, it fell off my dumbphone. That’s the official line although there may be a few witnesses to a slightly more violent version. They’ve all been well paid for their silence, so suffice it to say that my communications device has suffered electronic castration and now lies broken and battered in the depths of my desk drawer.

You see without the thumb numbing jog-wheel, you cannot access any of the features, however even before this eunuch conversion, the bloody thing had already forsaken some of it’s more advanced functionality “ to whit making and receiving calls. It combines that fearsome combination of slow and stupid with anything useful like trying to find someone’s number hidden behind a few hundred key presses and the world’s slowest screen refresh.

If the marketing men had gone with the slogan it’s really shit and every day it’ll piss you off in some new and innovative way BUT occasionally it may grant you access to email they could have avoided the charge of telling great big bloody whoppers when describing it as a handheld PDA with the functionality of a PC. Assuming the PC had been badly savaged by a hungry bear, ignited with rocket fuel and put out with a fire hose.

Still it did give me license to trader hilarious knob gags with the helpdesk. If I get fired, it’s the way I would want to go because in what other vocational situation can you ring up a complete stranger and ask can you help me, my knob’s dropped off?

Sadly, I think they’re going to give me another one. And it’s going to look suspicious if this was suffers similar deceleration trauma as the much maligned craphoneâ„¢ currently being converted to compost in my recycling desk drawer.

Can we still do Telex? Tin cans and some string? Shouting at people? There’s really got to be a better solution.

… but funny. Stole this from SniffPetrol but I will get round to writing something of my own soon.

BRITAIN UNDER SIX INCHES OF TRAVEL CHAOS

Britain was braced for more bleeding obvious advice this week as forecasters warned of another incoming front of TRAVEL CHAOS. This new warning comes only days after the whole country awoke to find a six inch covering of TRAVEL CHAOS had covered much of the British Isles overnight with more flurries of TRAVEL CHAOS over the following 24 hours.

However, whilst a further dusting of TRAVEL CHAOS could be a problem in itself, some experts say the real danger for drivers is of being hit by a sudden shower of sodding patronising advice from motoring organisations. “If this weather continues, drivers need to be extra careful to avoid large patches of fucking obvious advice,” noted Dr Gneil Pipely, Head of Wasting Everyone’s Time Studies at All Saints College, Appleton. “For example, it’s all too easy to be in the car listening to the radio when, next thing you know, you’re being told to avoid any journey that isn’t necessary, and by the time you sense the smugly high minded tone it’s too late to take evasive re-tuning action”.

But facile warnings apparently aimed at people who just drive around in their cars for no reason whatsoever could be only the tip of a very patronising iceberg, Dr Pipely warns. With the expected return of TRAVEL CHAOS motorists should also be on high alert for other blandly useless information such as ‘carry a warm rug in the car’, ‘take a flask of tea with you on every journey’, ‘if the road looks icy, don’t bang the car into first gear and mash the throttle like a mentalist’ and ‘always arrange for a St Bernard to run everywhere after your car just in case you drive into a crevace on the M4’. Motorists are also reminded that a good way to keep warm during TRAVEL CHAOS is to smash the car radio repeatedly with a hand jack until Sally fucking Traffic on Radio 2 just fucking shuts up.

Made me laugh anyway. Although they spelt crevace wrong. I dunno, I may have to write and complain. Talking of which, I’ve had to write Apple a strongly worded note regarding the longevity and robustness of their baby IPOD. Mine lasted almost three months before entering an unwarrantied electronic sulk. Reading between the lines, the reason they do not feel any responsibility to fix it is because “you’ve only gone and used it”

I’m back to my totally beaten up but still working 3 year old MP3 player. And I shall neither be buying Apple products every again or even eating one. That’ll show ’em!

There are some very strange people out there in the wibbly wobbly world of the Internet. Who would think of setting up a website to record graffiti and vandalism in public spaces?

Well this guy and actually some of them are quite amusing. You could get all pretentious citing this as street art and a platform for unteconstructed creatives to rail against the system, but that sounds like a right load of old horse to me.

Made me laugh tho 🙂