Month: August 2001

Tomorrow, I’ll be getting up stupidly early to go and organise a plant fair at Pashley Manor Gardens, Ticehurst, East Sussex. Hopefully the weather will be better than the forecast. See you there?

Idle thought: if you can feel listless, why do you never feel listful? Ditto ruthless/ruthful, wonderful/wonderless.

Utter bollocks. Apparently, the fact that more than half of the users of friendsreunited.co.uk are women is a reflection of the fact that men don’t have friends with whom they discuss personal topics. Well, I certainly have friends (of both sexes) with whom I discuss personal topics, and I don’t think I’m unrepresentative.

Went for drinks and dinner in Soho last night. Had a brilliant evening, full of good company, good conversation and an improbable amount of good Chinese food. Already I am looking forward to the next occasion.

More from Nick, bless ‘im!

Just when you thought the world was strange enough, Nick gets a food-obsessed stalker.

Well done to Simon.
The CIM had another go at trying to give me a heart attack this morning when another envelope arrived from them – once I’d got over the omigoditsmyresults stage and opened the envelope, I found it was only ballot papers for committee members of something. However, tomorrow should be another story.
UPDATE: apparently the CIM Education Department answering machine (because clearly it is too much trouble to have a person on the phone around results time) says that results are due in the last week of August – i.e. next week, and not today (so that we receive them tomorrow). The CIM is worse than useless – for an organisation that promotes good customer service and customer orientation, they treat their members really shabbily.
FURTHER UPDATE: apparently the CIM are telling some people that results will not be mailed out until 31st August, so we won’t get them until 1st September. grr.

This story is being treated as amusing by most of the news agencies that are covering it, but it is actually a serious problem for public gardens and nurseries. I’ve seen people take cuttings, flowers and even whole plants and put them in their pocket or bag, both at the nursery and elsewhere. The trouble is, even taking cuttings is a theft – and the cumulative damage can be considerable. Imagine a garden like the one in the article – it receives 60,000 visitors each year – if each one of them took a cutting, it wouldn’t be long before the garden was reduced to bare earth.
We have a policy at work – if we catch anyone taking a cutting, we charge them as if they were buying a fully grown plant (so that is around £5 – £10). I think if other gardens and nurseries imposed similar punitive measures, this sort of thing would cease. I’ve even heard that it is common practice amongst some garden visitors to carry scissors, plastic bags and even labels to facilitate theft!

Oh yeh, football season just about upon us, so here are my fantasy teams for this year.
In Andi Turner’s Fantasy Football (which Nico put me on to) (henceforth referred to as AFF):

In the Telegraph Fantasy Football (henceforth referred to as TFF), the team looks like this:

As you can see, there are some similarities between the two teams, with a few well known names and a couple of wildcards too. These are only the starting lineups, so there will be transfers during the season, although AFF rules allow for far fewer transfers than TFF. Weekly reports will be posted here, as usual.
And in other football related news, my team is 4 points clear at the top of division 17 at itsagoal.com, which is nice.

Been out of the office for most of the day, so no opportunity to write anything here. Not that I have much to say at the moment.
Apparently there is karaoke in the Nags tonight for Dave(the landlord)’s birthday. I’m not inspired, so might skip it. I could do with a cheap and early night anyway, as tomorrow night threatens to be expensive (more on that later, if I feel like revealing anything).