Category: Other stuff

Pretty concise and snappy title eh? Yes I do have a life outside Mountain Biking. No, it’s no better written or researched.

Recycle.. Recycle..

On By AlexIn Other stuff1 Comment

.. oh fuck that.

The firm I work for makes nothing but money and burns nothing but graduates. But now we have a green agenda which, I freely admit, has come of a bit of a shock. The only green things in the building are stumbling hangovers and forgotten new years resolution fruit. But as my colleague and “head of bins” explains we are now all gloriously empowered to chase and embrace the philanthropic market first trailblazed by Bill “I know I’m a nerdy, uncaring bastard but here’s a few quid to assuage my guilt” Gates.

It makes me so proud. We’ve suffixed every email with a trite reminder than by printing this electronic blame memo, entire regions of the amazon may be deforested (and here’s the rub, every extra pointless signature burns storage disks which are about as carbon friendly as a Hummer) and the battery coop of our office space is now festooned with colour coded bins each demarking a specific recycling repository.

Being all knit my own yogurt, I am completely bought into the middle class ideal of saving the planet. We recycle at home as if our life depended on it (you know, it just might), compost with wild abandon – mindless of the consequences of starting an organic chain reaction that could easily destroy the village – and drive carefully to the local dump (sorry household recycling centre) to dispose of the myriad of nasty stuff our right on council can’t be arsed to collect. Which includes the children – that’s a joke, oh hang on I’ve just counted, can anyone remember how many we used to have?

But the firm is spectacularly poor at being good at this kind of stuff, so instead of a simple voluntary system based on a disposal approach well understood from our own domestic shit, they’ve only gone and devised an entirely new regime. This has committee written all over it with a complex arrangement of multi coloured bins each with a narrow remit and lasting about five minutes before the (environmentally diffident) emails started to fly.

Now you could reasonably argue that the employees don’t really give a shit and would rather lampoon any well intentioned approach with questions such as “Do coffee cups count as wet or dry waste” and “what expense code do I charge my floor roaming bin hunt too?” and you’d be about right. But because the system is so complicated and the simple disposal of a bacon sandwich and quick gulped hot beverage requires an urban fox like visiting of about ten bins, they’ve kind of brought it on themselves. A Frequently Asked Questions email followed the removal of our personal bins attempting to stem the piss taking tide but from the raucous laughter of the majority, one feels that maybe not all the questions were that serious. Well not as serious as the answers which precisely described the exact disposal procedure for a half eaten banana.

So here’s what happens. Even the keenest wishy washy liberals amongst us take one look at bin alley before muttering “fuck that, I’ve got work to do” and deposit the entire contents of their desktop in the ‘non recyclable bin‘. Earlier today I chucked in my Laptop powered by dead hamster in there as well but so fetid were the contents it chucked it straight back out again. Alledgedly the bins are emptied twice a day but from the Friday fishy smell this morning, it would appear this is aspirational at best.

The smell makes my compost (you need to wee on it, no honestly you do, I have a thousand words on the subject, no honestly I have) seem appealing and a entire black market around selling empty hotdesks for bin space has thrown up many opportunities for personal currency advancement.

The firm will probably find a way to tax that so in the end, which may be the very reason they started down the road in the first place.

Me? I have recycled all my filing and am now filling every empty desk drawer with rotting compost. I admit as an act of rebellion it lacks something but once it explodes over the fire officer, my work will be complete.

It has all gone off!

On By AlexIn Bikes, Other stuff3 Comments

A parade of strangeness lined up for inspection this morning as – in no particular order “ I was confusingly confronted by a pink folder, a coat hanger and a set of weighing scales.

Last year about this time a whirling dervish, defined by big hair and powerful limbs, speeded a crinkly facsimile of a proper bicycle leaving me worsted at the end of a three mile race through the centre of London. So imagine my delight when, earlier today, the pink persecutor flexed its way into Hyde park, travelling slowly on silly wheels and making the same kind of pointless fashion statement as puff ball skirts.

Eagerly I chased down my nemesis ready for another battle of the sexes, only this time with even less fitness but even more cheating. But the only person cheated was me since “ amazingly “ some other asylum escapee had purchased the pointless pivoter in a garish shade of pink. Nevertheless, this was too good an opportunity for revenge and in barely an irregular heartbeat, she was consigned to the bin of the bested.

I’m pretty sure she was impressed, I know I was.

Still whistling a happy tune, my mood was further enhanced by someone having else having a crap day. An angry post-it note traded as a modern day thrown gauntlet “ hung as it was to a damp towel “ and promising any philanderer making wet and merry with said drying garment a set of broken legs.

I love this kind of machismo nonsense and, finding myself alone in the shower room, sorted myself out with a vigorous rub down using his non consensual communal towel, making sure it was properly damp even at the corners. Don’t look at me like that; after suffering the heinous theft of two shower gels and a underarm smelly, the gloves (or possibly gauntlets) are well and truly off.

And because everyone knows good things come in threes, I approached “ still with some trepidation “ the weighing scales of fearful truth. However, having already passed the qualifying ˜third hole in the trouser belt’, I was insanely confident that the fat burning combination of a bit of cycling and a lot of beer would reap the benefits of reduced poundage.

Although I’ve yet to fully research the weight loss properties of a daily dose of half a tube of Pringles and a man sized Yorkie. That’s the chocolate bar not the small dog in case you were confused.

But that research has been canned in a celebrity lager as “ and I’ve absolutely no idea how this could have happened “ half a stone of AL has left the building since Christmas.

Being an eternal optimist, I can only assume that I have contracted some wasting disease.

Do you have a few days to spare?

On By AlexIn Other stuff3 Comments

If so, I can recommend Tower Defense which will happily suck around a week from your life assuming you don’t have an addictive personality. Otherwise write off the rest of the year. It’s deceptively simple, but really quite fiendishly hard once you skip the easy level.
From Hand Drawn Games

Build a maze to slow down the “creeps” so you can blast them with your heavy ordinance. The tactics are around maze building, consolidated or distributed armament, placement of air towers and priority of upgrade. I played it about ten times at which point it tripped my talent/boredom threshold. My wife, however, is gunning for the top of the leader board.

Originally recommended by notorious crank breaker Jon over at Samuri who, as an IT geek like myself, has probably already reprogrammed his company firewalls to stop employees wasting their time. But as everyone knows, special access privileges come with network administration. Honestly, it’s the least someone doing that job deserves!

Spam

On By AlexIn Other stuff, Site Stuff4 Comments

In a period of less than four days, 534 different spam sites have attempted to prosecute their – frankly – shady products on the hedgehog, and all those who read her. For any of those with both chromosomes, around 532 would not have been of any interest whatsoever unless your beloved has requested a penis extension for his birthday. Of the other two, one offered a low rate interest loan from the bank of bqrwwallsiizx.com and the second promised that with just a single click, high resolution photos of Britney Spears would be available to me. “In every position you can imagine and some you can’t” allegedly and I’m quoting verbatim here.

You would clearly have to have the brainpower of a special needs haddock to even consider clicking on one of those links, and yet some people must because Spam’s random, scattergun approach is apparently successful. However, it firms up a couple of lingering suspicions I’ve had; 1/ It takes all sorts and 2/the web is primarily an electronic wank factory.

I feel quite proud to prod its’ vice ridden underbody with the occasional spike of the hedgehog. And yet, looking back over eighteen months, it appears I am not entirely blameless in some glorious stereotyping and ill considered abuse. A brief scan of 300 odd posts informs that the following groups have been lampooned, sent up, randomly abused or held up for a brief baseless examination before being dropped for something more interesting.

Countries and their people; London and Londoners, the Welsh, the Scottish, the Irish, Belgium (a staggering 7 times), the French, the Germans and almost every other major European superstate. I believe Macedonia has so far escaped any ill considered angst but there is plenty of time. To prove I’m not merely a jingoistic anglophile, I’ve also taken the piss out of Australia and America a few times as well. And there is a special mention for Milton Keynes. Someone had to.

Vocations and Hobbies; Policemen, pretend policemen, politicians, doctors, washing machine manufacturers, call centres (to the power of irritated), traffic wardens, security guards (hmm a pattern emerges), airlines, car dealers, cricket, football, rugby, folding bicycles, normal bicycles, road biking, mountain biking, bowling, golf and darts.

General piss taking stereotypes; The Young. The Old. The Middle Aged. Women. Men. People who can’t decide which they are. Professional sportsmen and women. High earners. Low earners. Family types. Singles. Pensioners. DIY’rs. Road Cyclists. Track Cyclists. Mountain bikers. My friends. Me.

Special one off “I’ll get you Butler” category; Chiltern Railways.

And that’s just a happy subset. So far this catalogue of angst has properly pissed off a total of two people. The first was a post that made me laugh but was – on reflection – a little more cutting than intended. The second resulted in me pulling an entry which I’ve never done before and I’m unlikely to do again. And that’s all you’re getting on that one.

It made me think about words tho. Not the shit I write, but the real craftsmen and women who forge masterpieces on the anvil of a million words. Wordsmiths if you like; writers who use the same nouns, adjectives and verbs as the rest of us but craft them in such a way that shock, cheer, illuminate or illustrate. What they also have in common is raising such a strong emotional reaction, it leaves you wondering if you shouldn’t just stick to addressing letters.

For me, it’s Simon Barnes on sport, Joe Simpson on mountains, Stephen Ambrose on War and then Dickens, Huxley, Salinger and Laurie Lee painting landscapes in your head and peopling them with astonishing characters. I quite like Dick Francis too 🙂 It’ll be different for you and quite right too although am I the only one that cannot get on with Shakespeare? It’s not the stories I have a problem with; it’s every time he was struggling to think of a word, he just made one up. I’ve been tirelessly campaigning to have “Moonscuttle” and “Gruntled” added to the OED but have been serially and snootily fobbed off.

So, for a moment of pretentious gazing of a hairy naval, I wondered about pickling the hedgehog once and for all and sending the old fella, with my best wishes, to a warm electronic burrow in the sky.

We’ll see.

Happy Easter

On By AlexIn Other stuffLeave a comment

An early Easter Bunny photo with a difference.

Happy Easter

Stolen from my friend Stu on the grounds that it is childish and a little bit naughty. So ideal food for the hedgehog then.

I’d just like to add, I don’t believe I have strayed onto the wrong side of the law this morning unless shouting at the kids and kicking the cat counts.

Look outside – it’s not dark :)

On By AlexIn Bikes, Other stuff2 Comments

This winter, I have mainly been method acting “Lithuanian Lesbian” when faced with any of the following – Dark, Cold, Wet, Injury or Apathy. Last year, the joy of spring was almost unconfined as after five months of misery, warm light evenings were a welcome reward for slogging through a globally unwarmed season. I was fit, fast and generally miserable whereas this year I’ve ensued the first two and instead spent many dark hours channeling just the latter.

But having given myself a stern talking too, my lethargy is at an end and, assuming that my bikes don’t degrade into swarf or great floods don’t start a run on build-your-own-arks, I shall be making up for lost time, lost fitness and – in the case of mountain biking – lost smiles. It would be fantastic to add lost beers to that list but frankly these past few months have introduced hops and barley as a staple diet. Although properly balanced with chocolate and milkshakes so that’s most of the nutritional bases covered.

So taking Spring at it’s word, I uncoiled from a warm bed this morning to be immediately tested with freezing fog and a light drizzle. And regardless of the clock of lies, my body was sulkily explaining it was really 5:45am. I bypassed an instinctive grab for the car keys and clipped into unfamiliar pedals so annoying my semi sleeping form even more. Instead of the motorised route hard wired into cossetted muscles, I headed out in the opposite direction to a station alternate that offered more trains and – more importantly – a far superior coffee shop.

Three things immediately occured to me me – firstly I didn’t know what time the train went, secondly the current time was hidden under three layers of fuckmeitscold layers and finally the distance was nothing more than a vague memory. Visibility of thirty feet or less hardly helped as cold lungs bitched about the yomping pace demanded by an anxious brain. But the five and a half miles were dispatched in a chilly sixteen minutes, which expanded past twenty as unfamiliar cycle facilities befuddled my sleepy and un-caffeined self.

But time was well on my side and clutching a rather lovely large Latte and pristine newspaper, I strode righteously onto the platform agog at unfamiliar commuters and the odd hated folder. Still they hardly slowed the train down when dispatched onto the line with nothing more than an evil grin and muttered “get a proper bike, you trouser clipped gaylord“. Important to make the right impression I’ve always thought.

The train was lovely – all civilised tables and empty seats. The experience was further enhanced as it failed to stop at stations separated by a short dog walk or the cheery thirty minute halts that pass for an on time service on the Amersham line. Early days though, it’s still Chiltern Railways who have a hidden charter to drive all but the most sanguine passengers to suicide attempts.

So far so good but my childish anticipation of riding home in daylight were scuppered by an impromptu meeting in an off site location serving cool beverages. And the mad dash to catch the seven pm train was compromised attempting to hustle while in receipt of the weighty laptop of doom. Next time I’ll be a little more careful which box I tick when ordering said Windoze brick because the battery alone weighs the same as Croydon and could power said town for about it a week.

And because the railway company has abandoned its’ commitment to green issues, we cyclists now have around 20{45ac9c3234d371044e23e276755ef3a4dde8f1068375defba7d385ca3cd4deb2} less bike racks to save the planet with. So while my train was serenely steaming out of the station, I was running up and down the platform in a frustrated doubletake attempting to find a slot to safely abandon the bike. The satisfaction of finally crafting a coveted wall spot was somewhat mitigated by the next four departures heading off only to my old station.

But finally, I’m heading home in non sardined comfort watching the day turn to night hoping against hope that I remembered to charge my lights.

Chill Fun Cleans

On By AlexIn Other stuff2 Comments

One of the many variants of rhyming slang to describe the urban enigma that is Milton Keynes. I tried – and failed – to find a simile for “desperate wasteland” but that should in no way detract from the sentiment. There are so many problems with MK – its’ unending housing sprawl, its’ frankly bonkers road grid system and the little discussed strange outpost of the firm. The latter was clearly the template for BBC2’s “The Office” both in terms of layout and the underlying current of insanity.

But before more of that, first you cannot experience the dubious delights of the town without being flabbergasted by a road system which painfully replicates everything that is wrong with the standard US city grid without capturing any of the benefits. The US system embraces a navigational approach based on triangulation of cross streets – you know 5th street is going to be south of 6th street and that main street is the geographical centre. This makes finding you way around at least a little intuitive.

MK dispenses with this proven system, instead keeping up Roman facsimiles such as Watling Street criss crossed with really useful mnemonics including “V7 twinned with Arse, Alberta and sponsored by Admiral Insurance“. It’s the kind of place that only accountants with slide rules or obsessive internet nutters understand. And I’m pretty damn sure that the SatNav companies had something to do with the construction. Unless you have an annoying digitised voice demanding that you take the next left over two curbs and a supermarket roof, you’re destined to starve in the maze of suburbs.

The town is no better – it calls itself the call “centre capital of the UK”. This is a boast that is only just beaten to the title of “most embarrassing town slogan” by Grimsby and its timeless “Cod Basket of the East”. It is essentially miles and miles of intersecting concrete and branding desperately in search of an identity. So it’s great we have an office there.

My journey to the office floundered at the first hurdle when the SatNav directed me through a complex of lovely, traditional villages that appear to have been demolished to make room for a bypass. If it was meant to be bypassing the villages that it has concreted over, it seemed to have missed a salient point but nevertheless, I was cheerfully informed that my car was now a boat and we were surfing an unnamed river at about fifty miles an hour. I’ll not be telling Honda that the next time I make a warranty claim.

Having finally stumbled on the correct road – sorry boulevard – through a simple approach of inspired guesswork and swearing, I’m not sure I should have bothered. This is the only UK office without any fee paying practitioners and it shows. It’s an oasis of apathy with whispering replacing conversation and any outward expressions of joy seriously frowned upon.

It’s hard to create any sort of social interaction in these conditions – that is until you venture to the toilet. These are the world’s smallest toilets and feel free to sue if you want, honestly any smaller and you’d need to hack a leg off to gain entry. Socially nervous office staff have to relieve themselves into a bucket located under their desk. The rest of us squeeze in and are thrust into the personal space of complete strangers.

Honestly, once you’re a handspan away from the next mans willy, he has no secrets from you. I ended up pissing in the sink just for a bit of privacy.

The office is adepressingly rabbit hutch with the firms’ preferred layout mirroring the geometrically mean streets outside. I ran away and found a coffee bar in twenty feet of green grass and this was a very hard place to leave. When I finally escaped through a navigational approach modeled on the German blitzkrieg, my joy was tempered by the terrible truth that I would have to go back next week.

I’m praying for some late winter snow 🙂

I could do that.

On By AlexIn Other stuff1 Comment

Four blokes in a pub, one says “if you could do any job, anything at all, what would it be“. This isn’t the setup for a crap joke, it’s a semi-accurate transcript of a conversation we tried to have while seeing whose liver would explode first. I say tried to have since much of the ensuing discussion focussed on the vocational potential to be permanently employed massaging Kylie’s tits or whether, at 39, it was too late to play on the wing for England.

Based on the current squad, I’d hazard a guess that you would be in with a decent shout but that’s not the point here. But it is close in that my perfect job would be a sports commentator. How great would that be? Travelling on someone elses cash to salubrious foreign locations and swapping work for chatting about stuff that a television audience can already see for themselves.

There is one problem though in that I’m too bloody English which, at best, is a nasty mixture of jingoism and cynicism. For example, commentating on an England football match where we were being bested by the People Republic of Who The Fuck Knows Where That Is, I’d cut across Graham Taylor discussing tactics with a snarled “oh for fucks sake, a hundred and thirty grand a week and they are still shit. God it’s depressing, I mean how fucking hard is it to kick a ball into a huge goal? I mean really?”

Okay so football is out, what about Rugby? A game I love with a passion but understand almost nothing. And while I could add nothing to the ten thousand offenses that a player can commit at a breakdown by apparently being on the pitch, I’d be able to make useful social comments such as “Brian, surely we cannot let our children watch this, there’s a man with his head up the bottom of his team mate and the referee has clearly asked at least four players to form a fuck“.

Cricket? The only game in the history of competition that breaks for lunch. Patriotism would out I think especially against the Australians “oh come on, give him a chance, let him have another go. He’s a lovely lad and neither of his ancestors sent any of you buggers to Tasmania” followed by a shrill “ah fuck the lot of you. What have you got? Skin Cancer, fuck all culture and a capital city that’s about as much fun as venereal disease.”

There’s almost no sport I couldn’t be chipperly ignorant about. But, frankly, compared to the chance of being curator to Ms Mynogue’s breasts, there’s got to be at least an outside chance of scamming a job.

Budgetory issues..

On By AlexIn Other stuff, Pretentious nonsense5 Comments

… now there was a couplet to strike terror into the heart of any freelance consultant. Fiscally, it didn’t get much worse than that unless the project sponsor was hit by the belated realisation that all your talk of stabilising event horizons or evangilising synergistic operating efficiencies was nothing more that total bollocks wrapped up in bullshit. It only ever got worse when your thin lipped accountant started nervously quoting sarbanes-oxley as you explained you’d bought a small yacht for the purposes of “business development“.

But even at our worst, which I grudgingly accept was on the euphemistic edge of dishonest, we were merely street magicians compared to Gorden “David Copperfied” Brown and his financial slights of hand. Politics rarely infect the hedgehog as it lacks the catharticism of other posts and leaves me wanting to throw the monitor into the local offices of the council. Plus, of course, I know bugger all about it although that is rarely a semantic leash to my random rabbit chasing doggedness.

But the porridge gobbler has gone too far this time. While one hand giveth, the other slaps you lightly about the face, joyfully explaining you’re screwed anyway. While I have absolutely no problem with a taxation system earnestly charting wealth redistribution through a sea of tax increases, I’ll be buggered if anyone is going to tell me that in some way it’s doing me a financial favour.

Personally I may more tax or I may pay a little less. Frankly, I don’t give a shit but I do care that a government that has crusaded as the bastion of public services appears to have spent everything while delivering very little. So while we’re laying off nurses and targets replace common sense, I’ve come up with a new idea. And I’m telling you because there is absolutely no bloody point in pretending that our vote offers some kind of representation.

How can 20,000 people, each driven by their own motives, imbue a power hungry arse to speak for them to an even greater power crazed circle, who themselves gave up listening about the same time the votes stopped being counted. This is not a party politics thing – they’re all as fucking bad as each other, they don’t care about your problem or your opinion but they certainly care about their own.

The US system as least acknowledges this and lets you vote directly for the President who may share some of your ideals such as bombing oil rich countries, or screwing the earth beyond the point of reconciliation. At least you know what you’re getting, rather than some pointless stuffed shirt asking anodyne questions about constituents that he cares only slightly less about that the bloke answering in the dispatch box.

They say the young are disenfranchised by politics. Good on them, maybe they see it for what it is.

Anyway, here’s my idea. In the same way that we receive good karma for sponsoring a goat or a cow in a country we once funded with slaves as the most profitable export, why not abolish some taxes and allow us to sponsor public servants? It’d be like The Sims but for real. I’ll sponsor two nurses in the local hospital and they can write me some reports on how many people didn’t die because someone cared about their welfare. I’d feel good, less people may suffer and it won’t cost the government a penny.

You see where this could go? We wouldn’t have to sponsor those public services that everyone accepts are either a total waste of time or a government revenue generator. Traffic Wardens – you can bugger off home for a start. Free Market economics with a social edge, I think it could be a winner.

I mean come on, we cannot really do any worse.

Death by a thousand (power) cuts

On By AlexIn Other stuffLeave a comment

After spending most of Thursday evening abandoned and nasally impaired, the 2mm of late winter snow predictably ground the railway to a further halt this morning. As usual it was everybody’s responsibility but nobody’s fault with Chiltern blaming London Underground and London Underground going with the like we give a flying fuck option.

Progress to Amersham was stately but pleasantly unexciting. From there on, nothing much happened for the next hour, other than the secret enjoyment of pulling faces at the platform based lemmings who shivered in their non train-ness. Not going anywhere is on the dull side of tedious, but slightly enlivened by chuckling at the less fortunate abandoned on a chilly, snowblown platform.

Yet in another inspired decision, the caring railway company decided the best course of action would be open the doors and cram a few more desperate people in. The reasons are occluded although strong evidence to support an alternative approach were readily provided by the full carriages with people already standing, and a groundswell of grumpiness that was ready to explode at any point.

This explosion came during the third halt, this time in the tunnel within spitting distance of Marylebone. And people were spittingly angry as an ominous silence from the PA system was drowned out by a hundred tired, angry and now “ frankly “ sweaty passengers wondering what the fuck was going on. Trains passed us imperiously on either side, while our stationary non progress was marked only by increasing physical and mental temperatures.

We finally arrived at 9:45. The journey had taken a smidge under two hours. My total commute this morning was three hours and ten minutes to travel 54 miles of which eight of them were done on my bike. This compares favourably to the last Monday morning of chaos but this in now way even raised the slightest of wry smiles on my chill chapped face. I just want to find someone to blame/shout at/dismember with the utensil of hurt – anyone in the CR Butlins uniform will do.

The driver did finally honour us with his dulcet tones imploring passengers to Please take all belongings with you. We have had a recent spate of the will to live being left on the train. You can collect these from the lost property office or by moving to another country.

I’m sat on the returning train as I write this and we’re making slow progress again “ this time apparently due to the price of cabbages.

Maybe I can get a bus. Or a helicopter. Are they expensive?