I had reached my grand old age with nary a one Comedy Non-Fast Coloured Thing In The Whites Washing Mishap. No longer. I wonder if the judge will be amused when I stand up wearing vaguely baby-blue collar and bands tomorrow.
It wasn't even something that gets washed, it was the rag my fountain pen has been wiped on after re-filling for several years...
Arse.
Hard frost.
Preferred route into work involves an idyllic green lane, with at one point a winding 1:1 gradient as it descends from the centre of the island to the coast.
Number of gritting trucks on the island: minimal.
Number of people standing around wondering how they were going to move their cars outside the house at the start of the gradient and witnessing me riding past: 4.
State of my brakes: no better than ok.
Spectacular. 9, 9, 8, 9 and 3 from the East German judge for style.
Ow.
When I was back in London last weekend I managed, in between the hangovers and the sleep deprivation, to find time to change my OS (for those who care, from Mandriva 2006, which isn't as good as its predecessors, at least so far as my needs are concerned, to Ubuntu, which seems fine). Rather than try and be clever I decided to do a complete wipe and clean install, backing up everything of course.
And so I did, and everything went perfectly fine. And then my colleague looked in and said "drink", and off we trotted to the Seven Stars for a while. Until I realised I was cutting it fine for Victoria-Gatwick Ex-checkin an hour before, you know the drill, so off I rushed, grabbed my bags from my office and off I went.
Without the pile of CD backups.
So far as work is concerned, that's fine, if necessary I have access to copies of that stuff by another route. What is missing is all the music I ripped to the computer when I came out here.
And so, for the present, I'm stuck with two CDs: a decentish recording of Mahlers 1&2, which at least has some mileage. And, err.. um. Culturniks of a certain vintage may be able to guess what the other one is. An album of seminal importance...
"I'm a Barbie Girl...."
Memo to self: when riding one's bike home at some speed late at night after spending hours pissing around with the precise wording of a rather complicated and important Opinion, it is ill-advised to use only your right hand when braking suddenly, particularly if you have just had new brakes fitted. The result will be that your front wheel stops very suddenly while your rear wheel continues to turn at speed, and you personally will turn a more or less graceful somersault over your handlebars onto the concrete. While you may be fortunate enough to avoid breaking any bones, you will feel it in the morning.
Today is not my day for doing anything. Starting with waking up, a feat at which I rather failed.
The cause of this can be traced back... well to "let there be light" obvs. More immediately, it can be traced back to the fact I foolishly put my phone in my back pocket when exploring the island on my bike at the weekend. (In itself that was great: various pubs and beaches logged for future reference, though the weather's changing fast enough I doubt I'll have much use for the latter. My bike handlebars came inexplicably loose during the day, so there were some hair-raising freewheels down green lanes as the bars rolled in my hands and the brakes went out of immediate reach, but that's now dealt with.)
Anyway, the result was one broken phone screen. Very pretty, as bust TFT screens always are: an impressive fat swirl of magenta across the screen with a double border in sunburst yellow and an outer haze of azure blue, but frankly not much use as an aid to comprehension of anything.
( Read more... )In my pigeonhole this morning:
"Dear [Liadnan]
On your recent VAT return you entered X in box 3 as your gross VAT for the quarter and in box 4 that you were reclaiming Y as VAT on purchases in the quarter. However, the figure you then entered in box 5 as the sum due to HMCE, Z, for which you also sent us a cheque* is 1000 pounds more than X-Y. We suggest you may have omitted to carry a 1 in the thousands and return your form for correction.
Love,
Her Majesty's Commissioners of Customs and Excise.
Or words to that effect.
As I said to the pleasant lady in Cardiff on the phone, this goes some way to explaining why I'm quite so poor this month.
*Which they have cashed. Obvs.
Safety razor my arse.
And I'm in court in a couple of hours arse arse.
KLM are being unhelpful about Istanbul flight dates.
Do we feel we ought to be worried about Azerbaijan Airlines as an alternative?
Ho hum. Just back from court on a s.359 (rectification of a register of company shareholders, if you're interested, which I doubt). Mr Registrar [N] decided to spend half the hearing reminiscing about his very first case as a Registrar back in the good old days, and how I really ought to look it up (because it might have been relevant to his jurisdiction and it was fun anyway, something to do with the Hollies), but since he'd already decided to do what I wanted him to do anyway I didn't mind.
Being a barrister is, sadly, not significantly like making love to a beautiful woman. Nor, of course, is it much like Kavanagh QC, Ally McBeal, that dire sitcom Chambers or Rumpole, at least in my field and at my level. Clerks, or whatever it was called, and This Life came a bit closer but avoided going into much detail. Why? Because, 90 percent of the time, it's actually quite dull, from the outside. At least 40 percent of the time it's dull from the inside.
In the end, the main purposes of my existence include being someone for angry High Court Judges to shout at for things that aren't my fault, and for maudlin Circuit Judges, Masters, and Registrars to tell sad stories of the death of kings anecdotes from their own careers, in a lazy half-hour before lunch.
I deserve every penny that people unaccountably never get around to paying me, I tell you.
****
I was really cross with someone for not answering the several calls I made to their mobile, or the text message I finally sent them, yesterday. Sadly, said person has now proved to me that I was in fact calling, not to mention SMSing, if that's a word, someone else. Who that may have been I have no idea, nor do I understand how and why the number in my phone address book changed. As I said, I'm an idiot.
You wait ages for a referendum on Europe -any one will do-, then it looks as though we might have as many as it takes. Or not. Possibly. In the meantime, Jack Straw seems to be putting his shirt on the chance the whole thing might collapse before we ever reach that point, which is actually probably worth a flutter.
(Note to self, on the other hand, see what I can get out of William Hill on a "yes" vote if I punt now.)
In other news, I am a fucking idiot. In both my professional and my personal life. Which doubtless comes as no surprise to any of you.
Hmm. Sunday afternoon. Should I (a) stay in bed with a book, the Economist, a DVD of Black Books and my laptop; (b) tidy the flat; (c) go out. Bearing in mind that Chalk Farm and all reachable stations north have lifts and are hence closed for the FBU strike, Camden Town, the next station south, is exit only on a Sunday because, bizarrely there are actually people who like going to Camden Market on a Sunday, and Mornington Crescent, next south, also has a lift. And that two massive thunderstorms are poised (unbeknowst to me, to be fair) to meet over London just as I get to the middle of Regent's Park on my way in?
Well, which do you think?
Now damply sitting in the webcafe at the Virgin Megastore, as it is dry and has reasonable coffee, while the thunderstorm continues to rage. I'm not sure if it is deliberate that the music they are playing is Bohemian Rhapsody