To all who may be reading this, a bit of information.

I am to be having a flatwarming event finally in my new place in London. It's a nice place honest, and many fun things will be provided like drink and food and music and games (hopefully).

Thanks to my rich housemate Nige, we are located in the affluent city boy heartland of Rotherhithe, left of Canary Wharf, so you needn't even fear any postcode gang knife attacks.

Probably be from about 5 pm on Saturday April 4 maybe earlier if you can be bothered. It's not the easiest of places to get to, so it might be best if I only try and direct people who can actually come, try and make it easier. Nearest Tube is Canada water, but it's a bit of a walk from there, or there are buses going from Waterloo and London Bridge. IF you know where to get off.

We probably have room to put up 4 or 5 people at least sleeping over, more if you can bring your own sleepy things. Would like to see people from good old reading, I'm missing the old girl.

So now you know, maybe see you and stuff

To everyone on my friends list who made important announcements/asked for help recently, I'm sorry I didn't respond. I wasn't ignoring you, I was busy. So comiserations/congratulations all round.

That's all until I'm less busy

Oh and hello

Something happened today that doesn't happen too often. My home village, population approx. 5,000, made it into the national newspapers. The last time that happened was when the vicar decided to randomly, Englishly, and ineffectually protest against the smoking ban. But this one wasn't so positive. It was in the Daily Mirror in a feature about how easy it is for kids to buy alchohol.

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/topstories/2008/02/13/this-is-how-how-easy-it-is-for-under-age-kids-to-buy-booze-89520-20317711/

Basically the village is East Peckham in Kent, and the situation is a 15 year old kid buying a can of lager DESPITE WEARING SCHOOL UNIFORM. That's the level of class we're talking here - school goddamn uniform. Somehow it doesn't surprise me - ever since the local primary school dropped off the league tables and went into administration the place has gone downhill and I actually feel more intimidated walking down the street there than I do in Reading. Kids smoking and heckling on both street corners most evenings, while the the facilities n the playing fields lie vandalised and unused.

But the way to deal with this kind of thing is not, surely, by abusing large segments of society using things like the Mosquito. For those that don't know, a Mosquito is a device that admits a painful whine supposedly audible only to people under the age of 25. This allows shopkeepers (who are usually too old to be able to hear it) to disperse groups of misbehaving teenagers from outside their shops, where they are likely wearing clothes we don't understand and using unfamiliar curse words. Damn their evil hides. unsuprisingly Children's Commissioner Sir Al Aynsley Green (he's a keyword don't you know) has come out against this saying it's unfair to law abiding youngsters and should be banned. For me this is pretty clear cut - why should shopkeepers have the right to cause suffering to a segment of society, based on the hideously prejudicial fact of their age group, even if it is to protect them from a dangerous minority? If everyone could hear it, there's no way it would be acceptable, so why should it be any different just because the only innocent people who can hear it a below a certain age (usually)? - it's madness, and obviously and dangerously prejudiced.

But what's really made me upset about it today is how much support these things have from the media and from the public. At the root of the justifications for it is a shocking selfishness, and a frightening assumption that all kids are out only to knife local shopkeepers (and that once you get past a certain age, you suddenly stop being dangerous). It's so easy for shopkeepers to justify it, saying 'it's the thugs' fault', when they can't hear it themselves. I was reading this BBC website discussion (OK, I know I shouldn't), and some of the comments made me want to scream, in anger, or in despair. What has the media driven people to? How have people reached the stage where they feel they can abuse people in a public space on the basis of age, and worse, that anyone who suggests that young people should have the right to use public services in peace is labelled a 'liberal do-gooder'.

http://newsforums.bbc.co.uk/nol/thread.jspa?forumID=4272&edition=1&ttl=20080213215053

I shouldn't read this crap. Puts me off my toothache

mood: uncomfortable

Oh and a happy new year to you. Now it's actually January I'm apparently allowed to say that, but not before, apparently. Am I the only one who thinks that December 31, particular the evening, is part of the festival we call the New Year, and that wishing someone a happy new year on the evening of December 31 is both normal and acceptable? Two separate people complained at me for wishing them happy new years before midnight last night. Spoilsports.

mood: numb

Two things have come to my attention after reading the various 'what I did last year and what I'm going to do this year' New Year entries being posted by various people on this site. The first is that I have had a really shit year during which I have achieved nothing. The second is that this year wasn't really any better or worse than any other years I've had in the past. ( Read more... )

Has crept up on me again. My Dad's at the door and I've got to go home to family. But I feel bad I've not seen anybody or even written a mass e-mail wishing people a happy Christmas, let alone sent cards as I often do. So as a partial recompense for that, Happy christmas to you. May it be Christmassy and fat and drunk. Maybe my parents will let meon the computer to send an e-card or something. OK I've not received any christmas wishes from anyone either, but what the hell. Happy new year and all.

I asked myself today what I'd been doing with my time this weekend. Basically, what I've been doing, pretty much solidly, all the time, has been worrying. So sorry if I've not been very sociable with anyone, I've just been busy.
( Read more... )

Would you rather A:

Be part of a working team composed mainly of people you dislike and abject slackers?

Or B:

Be in charge of a team of composed mainly of people you dislike and abject slackers?

Had so much flying around in my head the last couple of weeks, I've not been able to find any time for slacking or for posting or for sleeping enough, or for cooking my evening meals before they've all gone past their respective sale by dates.

( Read more... )

To those people I begged to add me as a friend, only to be confronted by my below depressed entry. I'd say it won't happen again, but we all know it will. 

One of the key reasons I haven't joined this site for so long, is because, if I used it to talk about what's really on my mind, what really makes me tick, I know all I'd do is scare people, depress people, make people uncomfortable because thay'd not know how to react. People don't like self obsession, they don't like whining, and they don't like people fishing for reassurance. Quite rightly. But the truth is there is one thing that preoccupies me, one thing I worry about, one thing I care about, one thing that matters to me, one thing that I'd write about if someone asked me to write about how I'm feeling right now. One thing that I've always felt would dominate everything I wrote on this site, and therefore do nothing but harm to myself and my friends and anyone reading this tripe. I fact, now I think about it, that's the only reason. Unsurprising as it's the only thing that matters to me in my life. One thing that leads to many other things, all of them negative.

( Read more... )

When you don't take holiday from work for a while, it's amazing now the world of daytime TV moves on without you. The last time I was able to watch TV solidly between the hoursof 3 and 6pm was some months ago, probably because I had a very slight (ie treatable with honey and lemon, not even extra strong, lockets) and chickened out of travelling to work. But in that time daytime TV ideas have got more and more bizarre. Maybe the schedulers use daytime as a place to try out ideas for shows that sound on paper as if they were invented by Alan Partridge, just to see if they can uncover the next Deal or NoDeal or Weakest Link. Sadly for each of these there has to be a Golden Balls with Jasper Carrott, or a Turnabout, or a 'The Enemy Within'.
( Read more... )

It's funny how your mental state can change in a few days. When I wrote the last entry I saw a light at the end of a tunnel at work. I'd asked about a job I'd seen advertised internally, one, as I mentioned before, which would mean maintaining grown up business relations with (sometimes) professional working grown-ups.
( Read more... )